Featured in The Mirror: The Leaflet Man Who Made £3,000 Spotting Empty Homes

We're pleased to share that Empty Property Hunters has been featured in the Daily Mirror, also telling the story of Paul Dixon – a Lincoln leaflet distributor who turned his frustration with empty homes into a genuinely lucrative side hustle.

Paul, 49, grew tired of seeing so many vacant properties on his delivery rounds and decided to do something about it. Using just his phone, he photographed hundreds of long-term empty homes across Lincoln and reported them to us, earning £20 for every genuine find. When two of those homes were sold, his earnings jumped into four figures, thanks to our 1% commission on the purchase price. The windfall meant Paul could treat his wife Karen to a luxury trip to the Dublin Racing Festival – complete with a hotel suite, race day hospitality and a tour of the Guinness factory.

The idea came about after a chat with fellow leaflet distributors about just how many empty homes they were noticing around the city. With more than one million empty residential properties across England (265,000 of which have sat vacant for over six months) Paul's story reflects a much bigger national picture. As he put it:

"There's a housing crisis, why can't anything be done about all these perfectly good existing properties? They're just sat there empty. It doesn't make sense."

Our founder Simon praised people like Paul for helping tackle the problem:

"Empty properties are a blight on communities and a block on fixing the nation's housing crisis. We salute our army of spotters who are out there every day reporting empty homes to our team – helping improve peoples' lives and breathe new life into forgotten areas."

Read the full article in the Daily Mirror →