4, 5, 6 Nov: BestAgent Process Onboarding Day – How BestAgent’s ‘No Valuations’ process transformed every aspect of sales in under a year.

What it is: A free, confidential 10am-2pm in-person, invite-only event for owner-managed independent agents from England or Wales.

Manchester Tue 4 Nov

Bristol Wed 5 Nov

London Thu 6 Nov

Charlie Lamdin will show how Carringtons (Kingston) have transformed their results in under a year, and are on target to multiply their turnover several times within 2 years, by adopting the BestAgent ‘No Valuation’ process taught by Charlie himself.

Gleaned from 25 years of observing the practices of hundreds of top agents around the country, The ‘No Valuations’ process results in much shorter transactions at higher fees, and almost zero fall-throughs.

Overvaluing is widely recognised as a destructive industry habit, clogging the market with unsaleable properties, reducing transaction volumes and threatening estate agency businesses. This is particularly worrying as we face falls in activity due to budget uncertainty and economic decline.

Learn how Carringtons uses this process to consistently create a market of competing buyers for every property they launch, ensuring a choice of buyers, fast deal times and so far, zero fall-throughs.

Andrew Hill of Carringtons will share their experience of adopting the ‘No Valuation’ process, and how it’s changed every aspect of their business. They’ll also be taking questions about how they implemented the changes, and the lessons along the way.

Sales times halved, fees up 50%, almost no fall-throughs

Carringtons’ Key achievements since Feb 2025:

1. Average fee up by over 50%, continues to rise.
2. Time on market down from 100+ days to 28.
3. Time to exchange down from 115 days to under 70 days
4. Fall-through rate currently remains at zero for all new instructions taken on under the new approach.
5. Appraisal to instruction rate is now over 90% (for accepted clients, rejecting unrealistic sellers)

Starting in December 2025, BestAgent is launching a one-time, 2-year programme for a limited number of suitable candidate businesses who wish to escape the overvaluing problem and achieve their full potential.

The purpose of the programme is to show that Carringtons’ success is not a one-off, and that this process works in any market, any location, and at any mainstream market price level. Therefore it is in BestAgents’ own interests that every agent who joins the course succeeds in at least doubling their turnover, but ideally hitting the 4x target at the end of the 2 year programme.

The biggest surprise

A spokesperson for Carringtons said “Until we began this process, the big overvaluing corporates were making things impossible and killing our pipeline, and the local market. Six months in and we’re selling everything faster at higher fees. Once you get used to the differences, you realise the strategy of transparency really appeals to sellers and buyers alike, and the markets natural forces take over and people can move. The biggest and most welcome surprise is the number of new business opportunities falling into our lap on the back of this process.”

Charlie Lamdin said “This process came from working with hundreds of different agents over 25 years, and combining the best ideas from all of them into one strategy. Good agents who deliver great results, deserve to make a great living, and you can’t do that unless you’re charging at least 2%. Sellers will pay that, provided they’re sure you’ll deliver. It’s a win, win, win.”

On a podcast interview with Matt Giggs, Christopher Watkin said (of the process): “This particular agent is one that’s known by me, and I know the people there. I’ve looked at their stats using Twenty EA, and what Charlie’s saying is true.” Matt Giggs replied “So it’s verified?”. Chris replied, “It is.”

Christopher Watkins also said, in a comment on a post on LinkedIn: “when I look at it, there is something that needs to be looked at in the technique Charlie talks about. If you are open minded, have a listen. Go in with open eyes and an open mind, and make your own decision on it.”

Who should apply: Owners of above-average quality, independent estate agencies anywhere in England and Wales, where overvaluing is affecting your business and your local market.

How to get your invite:

Email events@bestagent.co.uk today with basic details of your estate agency (name, location, website) and which location you’d like to attend (Manchester 4 Nov, Bristol 5 Nov, London 6 Nov). Please comment on how overvaluing is currently affecting your market or business. If less than half of your stock is under offer, you’re a good candidate.

You will get a response confirming your invitation, with full details of the location and agenda for the day.

If places are oversubscribed, they will be allocated to qualifying agents on a first-registered basis.

Note: This event focuses on helping established independent agencies; future sessions may include startups and self-employed agents.

Watch this livestream with Charlie and Carringtons reviewing progress 6 months into the process.

The post Press Release: Agents to hear how “No Valuations” process halved deal times, bumped fees 50%, eliminated fall-throughs appeared first on BestAgent.

2022 was when the 14-year honeymoon of cheap mortgages, stamp duty holidays and desperate buyers allowing agents to “make hay while the sun shines” screeched its tyres and smashed into a brick wall. It’s over, for good.

2023 is going to be a starkly different world for the moving industry, which will benefit the prepared. 

I’m an optimist, but not to the extent that I ignore the oncoming storm and pretend it isn’t happening.

No. As an optimist I take the opposite view. Being prepared for a storm makes me more optimistic about my chances of survival.

Fireproof overalls

That’s the purpose of this post: to share with you, estate agents of the UK, all of the best tactics and strategies I’ve encountered in 24 years working alongside agents of all kinds. This isn’t advice. This is sharing the observations of which agents I’ve seen outperform their competitors in previous downturns. The 1990s, and particularly 2008.

Dealmakers

2023 belongs to agents who are the best dealmakers. The agents who focus intensely, aggressively even, on only allowing their time to be spent talking to customers with the strongest motivation to move, and ignoring all the tyre-kicking time-wasters with equal intensity.

Let them waste the time of other, less focused agents.

The mistake inexperienced agents will make

As the cake of transaction volumes shrinks, as it most certainly will, the least experienced agents will make the mistake of continuing to focus most on winning instructions. Huge mistake. This will speed up their downfall as they end up with a portfolio of unsellable stock, and no proceedable buyers in their applicant box.

In a falling market, the agent with the most registered, proceedable buyers will be the ones winning the realistically saleable instructions, and doing the deals. 

Don’t take it from me. Here’s an agent veteran of several downturns

I haven’t walked the walk. But John Durrant has. He cut his teeth in agency as a junior in the 1970s downturn. He then started his own award-winning agency in the depths of the 90s downturn. So 2008 was a picnic for him. In this article he gives an in depth perspective of what agents need to understand to make the most of a falling market. Priceless advice from the horses mouth. 

Read his article here: https://bestagent.co.uk/john-durrant-advice-for-estate-agents-property-market-downturn/

Here’s a 5 minute video of the 5 tips I’ve picked up from the best agents 

Everything here is doable, if you decide to do it.

The golden survival rule if you are an agent who hasn’t been through a downturn before is to find a local mentor. It must be another agent who has been around long enough to share their direct experience of what a downturn is like in your local market. You won’t find better or more relevant advice for you and your agency than that.

Everything in John’s article and my 5 tips video is entirely within the reach of any agent who decides to do it. 

So, I hope you’ve found this useful and helpful, and that it helps give you a little more confidence to face the difficult market that 2023 will bring. 

So, here’s wishing you all the best for 2023 and remember, figure out what you need to change, and just do it!

Find me on LinkedIn if you have questions or would like any help. Best wishes Charlie Lamdin. 

The post Estate Agency Survival Tactics for 2023 appeared first on BestAgent.

On 26th September, BestAgent held it’s inaugural Marketplace Suppliers conference in London. Industry suppliers gathered to hear from a panel of agent speakers about their frustrations with the Proptech supplier industry. The conference was oversubscribed with standing room only. Since then BestAgent has had more than 110 supplier companies register their interest to be part of the Marketplace.

Today, courtesy of BestAgent’s partner Lonsdale Insurance, a meeting is being held in the iconic Lloyds of London building, pictured, where the first suppliers to be integrated into the marketplace will agree the launch plans.

Construction work on the technical foundations of the Marketplace is nearing completion and the next step will be testing the integrations with the 18 Primary Partners that were selected following the conference. All of these companies are in attendance at tomorrow’s meeting, where the single integration method that will allow almost any existing supplier API to connect directly to the Marketplace will be demonstrated, along with several other new features of the BestAgent proposition.

New BestAgent CRM functions being revealed

Partners will have an exclusive preview of the forthcoming CRM functions being released which are set to make the latest tech available to the smallest agents, free of charge, as BestAgent earns its income from charging it’s Marketplace suppliers a commission on their sales.

BestAgent is not planning to compete directly with other CRM’s, but rather is taking a different approach: Offer the basic essential CRM functions only, and leave the agents to connect the integrated supplier products of their choice which work best for their business, to complete the CRM functions they want, such as PayProp, AgencyExpress board ordering, ValPal and ViewMyChain.

Once the Marketplace has successfully launched with its initial 20 or so integrated partners, it will be opened up to all other suppliers to connect their services. To begin with, integrations will only be offered to single branch agents, with a focus on completing the offering of all available services through the Marketplace. Eventually, when the complex layer of multi-branch agency requirements has been added, it will be opened up to all remaining agents.

Invitation-only

Initial access for single branch agents to the Marketplace will be by invitation only from the Primary Partners, as well as being offered to any agents already using BestAgent as their CRM.

Agents will receive a single monthly itemised bill for any services they have chosen to purchase, which will be automatically settled by credit card. This will substantially reduce paperwork and admin for agents, as well as improving the collection of payments for suppliers, all of which will be automatically settled and disbursed.

Commenting on the forthcoming meeting, BestAgent Founder, Charlie Wright, said “The idea of a free, easy CRM tool which has all supplier products integrated seamlessly has proved extremely popular to agents and suppliers alike. It will spare agents the headache of interface-fatigiue and multiple data entry, and make access to new products much easier for them. We are focusing only on delivering this facility to single branch agents to begin with, as they make up the largest proportion of the industry, and represent a long-tail of vast opportunity to suppliers.”

Whilst the CRM tool, which uploads properties in real time to all major portals, has a GDPR compliant property and applicant database, and offers the option of a free agency website, is already available and being used by agents, access to the Marketplace for the first agents is expected in early 2019.

The post BestAgent Marketplace suppliers meet to agree launch plans appeared first on BestAgent.