Charlie Lamdin says estate agent overvaluation is the single biggest cause of slow transactions and failed sales
Overpricing is the single biggest cause of slow property transactions in the UK today, and the estate agents, lenders and brokers perpetuating it are, in Charlie Lamdin's view, damaging the very clients they are meant to serve.
Lamdin (pictured top), founder of housing marketplace BestAgent, has spent years making an argument the industry has been reluctant to hear. In a market where asking prices consistently outstrip what buyers can borrow, he says the consequences extend well beyond a delayed sale.
"You cannot overstate the damage that overvaluing does to people's finances, life chances, and everything else," he told Mortgage Introducer.
Why is overpricing the number one issue in the market?
The mechanics, as Lamdin describes them, are straightforward. An agent wins an instruction by quoting a seller an inflated figure. The seller rejects offers that fall short because they believe the valuation – a belief reinforced by agents, lenders and brokers all communicating the same upward price narrative.
"Right now, overpricing is by far the biggest problem in the market," he said. "You want to know why mortgage transactions are down? Overpricing is number one."
Once a property has been on the market long enough to require a price reduction, the damage is already done. Buyers in any given area follow listings closely, and a home that has sat unsold and dropped in price quickly becomes, in Lamdin's phrase, "the not interested pile of most buyers." Sellers who eventually accept a lower offer will end up with less than if they had priced correctly from the start – a fact, Lamdin argues, that most sellers only understand when it is too late.
"If you have to do a price drop before your house sells, you will end up getting less for it than you would have got had you priced it correctly to start with," he said. "So immediately, overpricing means you will end up with less money."
What does choosing the wrong agent actually cost a seller?
The financial loss is only part of it. Lamdin is insistent that the human cost of an overvalued instruction, particularly in a falling market, is routinely underestimated.
Sellers locked into a sole agency agreement with an agent who has overvalued their property can find themselves unable to move for months. For those whose reasons for moving are time-sensitive – a family illness, a change in circumstances, a purchase already agreed – the consequences can be irreversible.
"I see an overvaluing agent as someone who curtails people's life chances," he said. "I have members of my own family who asked my advice and then ignored it on selling their house, missed the market and missed out on their dream home. They had an offer accepted on a dream home. They didn't sell their flat because they were with the wrong agent. That was like a sliding doors moment. That was their life."
The problem is compounded by the psychology of loss aversion. Sellers, Lamdin argues, consistently choose to overprice rather than risk leaving money on the table – a calculation that reliably produces the outcome they were trying to avoid.
"Sellers' fear of loss is like, I'd rather overprice and then reduce it later than risk underpricing it and missing out if I could have got more," he said. "That's the mentality of sellers, and it is completely wrong."
Should overvaluing agents face greater accountability?
Lamdin believes overvaluing agents should face greater accountability, and points to existing obligations that most sellers are unaware of.
Under the Property Ombudsman's Code of Practice for estate agents, they are required to retain evidence of any valuation they provide and must be able to justify it if challenged. Lamdin argues that if more sellers understood this, agents would be less able to win instructions on inflated figures without consequence.
"If more sellers knew this, agents wouldn't get away with it so much because sellers would actually challenge," he said.
In practice, many do not. Sellers who have been misled about their property's value often find, by the time the reality becomes clear, that they lack the appetite to pursue it. As Lamdin puts it, they end up "licking their wounds in the corner" rather than holding their agent to account.
The consequences extend beyond individual sellers. Downsizers who cannot achieve their expected price find themselves unable to buy a smaller property and release equity to live off – trapped, as Lamdin describes it, in homes that are too large and too expensive to run.
What can brokers do about it?
The role of the mortgage broker, in Lamdin's view, is not to speculate on where the market is heading but to understand what is actually happening in their client's life. The best advisers, he argues, are the ones who read personal circumstances without being asked and structure their advice accordingly.
"The best brokers are the ones who, without asking, can tell that this marriage is on the rocks and there's going to be a divorce in a couple of years' time," he said. "They do not want to be locked in with an early redemption that lasts for five years."
That kind of advice requires a quality of attention that technology cannot replicate. Lamdin, who has spent his career building software for the property industry, is emphatic that AI will not displace brokers or estate agents, not because the tools are insufficient, but because the work is too personal.
"A broker's job is to listen to the personal circumstances of their client and advise them on the right product features that they should be going for," he said. "It involves sensitivity to people's life circumstances and finances. You need a human being who understands what happens in this marketplace to guide you through it. That's not going to change."
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