BestAgent founder Charlie Lamdin argues house price data tells brokers nothing they can actually use
The Lloyds House Price Index has recorded a 0.4% annual fall in August, marking the first year-on-year decrease since November 2023.
Charlie Lamdin (pictured top), founder of housing marketplace BestAgent, sees it as further evidence that the industry's obsession with house prices is doing more harm than good.
The average property now costs £298,468, down from £299,153 in July, according to the Lloyds data. But Lamdin's argument is not about the direction of travel. It is about whether national house price indices serve any practical purpose for the brokers and lenders who publish and promote them.
"It's just lender PR," he told Mortgage Introducer. "I have a mantra which is talk process, not prices."
What does the Lloyds data actually tell brokers?
The regional picture within the August data underlines the point. Northern Ireland recorded annual growth of 6.9% to £231,245, while Scotland rose 3.5% and Wales 0.6%. At the other end, Greater London fell 1.5% to £534,177, the South East dropped 1.6% and the South West and Eastern England both fell 1.2%.
Charlotte Harrison, chief executive of Homes at Skipton Building Society, noted that the annual price fall "masks very different realities depending on where people live and their stage of life," with housing costs above 45% of household income for many first-time buyers and average deposits at 140% of household income in London – double the level in the north.
Lamdin goes further. He argues that the national average figure is not just incomplete, it is actively unhelpful for advisers trying to have honest conversations with clients about what they can afford.
"National averages help nobody," he said. "Literally, there's no one – not movers, not agents, not brokers – who are influenced in any way by what the national average figure does. It is a meaningless metric."
His broader case cuts against the grain of an industry built on property values. Lenders and brokers, he argues, would transact more business if they stepped back from house price commentary entirely.
"Lenders would sell more mortgages if house prices were cheaper," he said. "It's an incontrovertible mathematical truth."
Why the industry's house price obsession is self-defeating
The argument draws on Lamdin's background as a derivatives broker in the early days of his career, trading UK gilt futures and interest rate contracts in the open-outcry marketplace – experience he says gives him a grounding in how financial markets actually work that most property commentators lack.
His contention is that when lenders publish monthly house price data suggesting prices are rising, they set seller expectations at a level buyers increasingly cannot match, and that gap has widened as mortgage rates climbed. Rather than helping transactions complete, the narrative clogs the pipeline.
"If I could get agents and brokers to adopt that approach to their communications, whether it's one-to-one with an individual client or on their social media or in their national marketing, more people would move house, more mortgages would get sold, less deals would fall through, everyone would be better off," he said.
The alternative, as Lamdin sees it, is for brokers to reframe their client conversations away from market speculation and towards the mechanics of getting a deal done – mortgage readiness, paperwork preparation, and the steps that actually determine whether a transaction completes.
BestAgent, which Lamdin founded with the stated aim of halving transaction times and fall-throughs, is built on that philosophy. The platform connects buyers, sellers, agents, mortgage brokers, conveyancers and surveyors within a single transaction environment, with transparency rather than price optimism as its organising principle.
What should brokers be saying instead?
The practical implication for mortgage advisers, Lamdin argues, is straightforward. Stop speculating on where house prices are headed and concentrate on what clients can control.
"I'm not going to win any fans in the mortgage industry saying this, but if I could show them that they would actually sell more mortgages by saying to their clients, 'look, I've got no idea what's happened to house prices, but I can help you get a home' – that's the message."
He points to a structural problem that rarely features in market commentary, with buyers missing out on properties not because of price, but because their mortgage is not in place when they need it.
"Buyers miss out on properties because they haven't got themselves sorted out and their mortgage isn't ready. No one ever talks about that."
On the question of whether prices and rates will improve, Lamdin is equally direct. He warned in 2022, when the Bank of England’s base rate stood at 3%, that rates would rise significantly further – a view dismissed at the time but vindicated when the base rate reached 5.5%. His position now is the same. The uncertainty is real, and advisers who lean on optimism bias to guide product choices are not serving their clients well.
"If prices were allowed to settle to a natural level, then we wouldn't need to be extending lending multiples or terms, which would make everyone better off."
Want to be regularly updated with mortgage news and features? Get exclusive interviews, breaking news, and industry events in your inbox – subscribe to our FREE daily newsletter. You can also follow us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn.
