FLYING HIGH!

Charlie Lamdin is the founder of home moving website bestagent.co.uk and also presents the Moving Home with Charlie broadcasts on YouTube. His fascinating life has certainly had its ups and downs as he explains to Lynda Clark. He tells her about his interesting career, his love of planes and has some very good advice for first time buyers

"ALWAYS TRY TO HAVE A MORTGAGE IN PRINCIPLE READY WHEN YOU MAKE AN OFFER ON A HOME AS IT IS FAR MORE LIKELY THAT THE OFFER WILL BE ACCEPTED BECAUSE YOU ARE READY TO GO"

"THE THRILL OF FLYING A SEAPLANE IN PLACES LIKE THE FJORDS IN NORWAY, ALASKA AND MAINE AND NOT EVEN KNOWING WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO LAND IN THE WILDERNESS IS INCREDIBLE. IT’S A PROPER ADVENTURE"

Over the years I have done some fascinating interviews with all sorts of people. But, when I went on to Zoom to interview Charlie, I was totally surprised! He was standing in an airfield by one of his planes looking totally relaxed and very much at home – this must have been one of the strangest but most exciting interviews I have ever done!

Charlie’s birth father was a world-famous Portuguese concert pianist and when Charlie was very young his mother and father divorced. His father went to Brazil in 1980 and has never been seen again. When he was five his mother remarried. “I had a charmed childhood and lived in Sussex in an old farmhouse with the extended family and I had a very happy time. When I was just eight years old I was sent to boarding school, which wasn’t the best but I made some incredible lifelong friends there. I then went to Charterhouse but I was very badly bullied and that time was not a happy one for me. I then went to Stowe and was eventually expelled despite even worse bullying and did my A-levels at a tutorial college in Brighton. That was great fun and Adele’s ex-husband, Simon Konecki, was a close friend back then.

“My first job was working for a notorious kitchen company. I went on an intensive sales course and was paid commission only. The first kitchen I sold was to a single mum for £10,000. She couldn’t afford it, but I got £600 commission. It made me feel very guilty and uneasy about the whole way the company operated, so I quit.”

At just 19 he was ready to face the bigger world of employment and he got a job as an insurance broker in the city. After a year, he was invited to spend two months in the Caribbean with his girlfriend and decided to leave.

When he got back, through one of his stepfather's contacts, he then started another job as a Junior Broker with one of the largest brokers on LIFFE (London International Financial Futures Exchange). “It was absolutely crazy, there were 2,000 people in one room, shouting at each other and talking on the phones doing deals. It was bedlam. It was a totally male-dominated society with very few women and those women that worked there had a very tough time. Again, I was physically and mentally bullied – I had my drinks spiked and was screamed at and demoralised by some of the other traders – it was really awful. Eventually one of the directors publicly accused me of something I didn’t do. Because I publicly defended myself he didn’t like it, and fired me. But I got six months' pay and it was a huge relief!”

At this time, many of his school friends had finished university and were planning on spending the summer partying and having fun before they settled into work. “I knew they would be having the best summer so I decided to join them and after my last terrible working experience I knew I could never work for anyone ever again as I am just not the type of person to sit in an office all day.”

For the next five years Charlie ran a mobile car washing company from the back of his Land Rover in Sussex. “It was very, very hard work as we were open seven days a week and washing cars is a very physical job –believe me! I got the contract for valeting VW dealerships and also had a hand car wash in Crawley. I had 16 people working for me with so many different characters including exconvicts. We had some really good customers but there were gangsters trying to muscle in on the business so I had to watch my back. I learned a lot about the real world.”

It was then that Charlie inherited £25,000 from his grandfather and decided to buy his first property. “I kept £1,500 back for conveyancing fees which left me with £23,500. I saw a flat which was on the market for £35,000 and I decided to make an offer, telling the estate agent that was all I had, and amazingly it was accepted. I did quite a lot of work on it and rented it out. It was unbelievable that the tenant who I rented it to bought it a year later for £55,000 so I made a decent profit. I then bought again in Hastings and did exactly the same thing and again the tenant bought it – incredible. Sadly, I got meningitis and it took me a very long time to recover and I had to leave the car washing business.”

In 1998, he started Datography with a techie entrepreneur partner. They invented the first one-stop virtual tour, professional photography and floor plan service to estate agents in both London and Sydney, Australia. Foxtons, then privately owned, copied the idea and Charlie sued them for copyright infringement and won an out-of-court settlement. The company grew and they gained 16 investors but sadly he ended up falling out with his investors and partners and Charlie ending up losing his job, his shares and the company imploded.

Never to be beaten, in 2003 he started up a new competitor, BPM, with an old friend. They grew even faster, reaching 120 staff in three countries. “We were open 24 hours a day and could turn the photos and floorplans around in super-quick time. But my former partners first tried to bury me in litigation and when they failed they asked me to merge my new business with Datograpy. I absolutely refused as I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened before.”

Sadly, the financial crisis of 2008 finished BPM off and he started his third tech start-up. “I offered an amazing service and had clients all over the country. I had access to data which gave me an insight on how residential sales and lettings were going which was invaluable to any estate agent.”

Always up for a new venture, Charlie was also the drummer for Lloyd Grossman’s punk band, The New Forbidden. He married singer/songwriter Liz Cass in 2006, which ended in an amicable divorce two years later. But he then found a new passion, flying light aircraft. “I absolutely love planes and I got my private pilot's licence in 2010 and then in 2014 I got a seaplane rating too. There is nothing quite like it and I am totally hooked on flying. The thrill of flying a seaplane in places like the fjords in Norway, Alaska and Maine and not even knowing where you’re going to land in the wilderness is incredible. It’s a proper adventure.

"I have three children with my partner Annemarie, who are seven, six and seven months old and they are home schooled. My dream is to fly my family around the world in a seaplane. The older two are ahead in reading and maths and we encourage positive, challenging play. We are basing it on the Finnish system of parenting and it’s working very well.”

In 2016 Charlie started his own software development company in Lisbon, Portugal, where he also has family. BestAgent, a national property website, is now fully operational and connects movers and agents in a new way. “I have been in the business for a long time and with all my knowledge I want to make the experience of buying and selling property the best it can be for everyone. I have started three YouTube channels. Charlie Lamdin’s Vlog is a personal diary channel which documents my family and flying adventures, BestAgent is a property industry channel for estate agents and finally there is Moving Home with Charlie where I share my insights and knowledge with homemovers. It gets over 200,000 views a month and I have 25,000 followers on TikTok.”

Charlie has some excellent advice for first time buyers. “Firstly, view as many properties as you can as it’s the only way to know what’s really happening in the area you want to live. Always try to have a Mortgage in Principle ready when you make an offer on a home as it is far more likely that the offer will be accepted because you are ready to go. Do not overpay for a home even though you think you can afford it. If you go way beyond your initial budget it often leads to you being in negative equity. Finally, be nice to estate agents – by being reasonable and respectful to them you will find that they will treat you in the same way and they will give you priority if a suitable home comes on the market.”

“My goal is that everyone should have a home of their own. I am passionate about trying to end homelessness and I am working with local councils to try to help this terrible situation. I am on a mission and once I get started on something I just won’t stop.” bestagent.co.uk mhwc.co.uk youtube.com/movinghomewithcharlie