First, scrap stamp duty completely for first-time buyers with no threshold. Two, mandate HMRC to publish house prices monthly in full, to bring transparency and help first-time buyers avoid being tricked into overpaying. Third, ban any further financial stimulus such as Help to Buy or loosening lending now that it's been proven to hurt affordability and push prices out of reach. As good as they'll get: Lamdin suggests people need to accept current mortgage rates as roughly what to expect for the foreseeable future Do you have any tips for buyers making offers to estate agents? Avoid negotiations completely, because you will usually lose. They [estate agents] do it for a living. Decide on your maximum comfortable price, your 'first and final' offer, send it by email making it clear it's the only offer you're making, and walk away if not accepted. You'll be amazed how many will come back to you and accept your offer after initially declining it. What's the best piece of advice you'd give to someone looking to get on the property ladder? Don't think of it as a ladder any more, the ladder has fallen over. But, always buy a home, if that's what you want, just don't overpay, and don't expect it to make you any money. What advice would you give someone planning to sell their home this year? Never, ever sign an estate agency contract that ties you in for more than eight weeks. This one step alone will help you avoid more mistakes than any other. Don't get stuck with a bad agent: Lamdin advises sellers never sign an estate agency contract that ties them in for more than eight weeks. Should aspiring first-time buyers and downsizers consider renting rather than buying? From a purely financial perspective, absolutely yes. Leaving the non-financial stability benefits and security of owning your home aside, everyone with the choice should do their sums very carefully. There are now much better returns than property almost everywhere, and with more liquid assets. So, if ultimate ownership is the goal, for people in certain circumstances, a faster route to outright ownership is to rent and invest. It also keeps greater flexibility in the meantime, and the option of changing strategy should conditions make it worthwhile. Right now, there is almost zero financial case for buying over renting, because house prices aren't keeping up with inflation, and costs of ownership far exceed renting costs, because of materials and labour costs when maintenance or renovation is required. Will Labour miss its 1.5million new homes target? By a mile, maybe even as much as 50 per cent, because demand has collapsed. With social housing an exception, this isn't a problem. There is no national housing shortage. There are between 750,000 and 1.3m long term vacant homes, depending on your source - the last census said 1.3m in England and Wales. Planning permission is no longer as much of a bottleneck as it was. In London alone there are 280,000 planning consents granted, but the developers haven't started building. New build sales in London have completely collapsed. New planning applications are at record lows. It literally couldn't be any worse for the government and Steve Reed will be eating his 'build baby build' hat. No chance: Lamdin says the Government might not even hit half of its 1.5million homes target What should the government do instead? First, put out a statement saying that they will only be focusing on social housebuilding, and leave the private sector alone. Second, instruct HMRC to publish its house price data every month when it publishes its transaction volume data - it deliberately withholds price data, which could provide immediate price transparency. Three, stop increasing mortgage lending multiples and terms which are the biggest culprits in pushing house prices up and making them less affordable. What is the most worrying property problem? The biggest crisis is the one that affects the most people, and it is the ratio of the cost of a home to wages, whether renting or buying. This is not only impoverishing everyone, as housing vacuums up more and more disposable income, but it also starves the local economy of spending from residents. It's a double whammy. The fastest and most sustainable solution to this is for them to stop policies which hurt employment, limit lending multiples, and embark on a mass social housebuilding programme, which will bring down rents, house prices and the costs to the taxpayer of temporary accommodation. It would also result in less homelessness. Renting could be best: Lamdin says there isn't much of a case for buying over renting, because house prices aren't keeping up with inflation and costs of ownership exceed renting costs What could stop house prices rising? I see a threat to rising house prices as a good thing. The cost of living is too high for everyone, precisely because of house price rises. House prices need to flatline - not fall, as that creates negative equity risk and harm - while wages rise. If house prices rose at 2 per cent a year, but wages rose at 3 per cent a year, long term, we'd be on the road to a much happier country. House price speculation will be remembered as the misguided idea that cost a whole generation their chance to own a home. But the 'risk' to rising house prices is firstly, rising unemployment and secondly, flatlining wage growth. If you could pick one area to invest in property for the next decade, where would it be? Manchester, because I think it's going to take over from London as the most vibrant and exciting place to be, for a while at least, and prices will increase there because they're currently better value than elsewhere. Other towns and cities in the north are in a similar bracket. For example, Liverpool. Time to shine: Lamdin expects house prices in Manchester to increase because he expects it to take over from London as the most vibrant and exciting place to be What one location would you be avoiding? London. The leasehold and cladding crises are a disaster. Even if you can make a good cash return on a rental property, you're going to be losing out on capital value, unless you really know what you're doing and holding for the very long term. Are new builds a bad investment? New builds are often the worst property investments because of the retail premium evaporating on the day you buy it. You're in the red on day one for at least five years. The best investments are usually nothing to do with a particular property type, but more to do with how well you negotiate and how much discount you achieve. I know very successful portfolio investors who have 19 out of 20 offers turned down, but the 1 in 20 that's accepted is always a great 'investment' because of how cheap they got it and what that does to the yield. Bad buy: Lamdin suggests that new builds are often the worst property investment because they lose value from the day you get the keys Is buy-to-let a good or bad investment today? In my view, it should never have been considered as an 'investment'. It's a hands-on business. The landlords who viewed it as an investment tended to be the ones that tenants had most complaints about. Never available to handle maintenance, slow to respond, difficult to deal with. But the landlords who ran their portfolio as a business - even a small one of just two or three properties - and took it seriously, understanding that a happy tenant is a profitable tenant, can still do well from it. But the days of 'set and forget' buy-to-let as an 'investment' are now gone, especially with the Renters Rights Act around the corner. This will be a good thing though. The buy-to-let boom on the back of the last Labour government's mortgage lending loosening was one of the worst culprits for creating the affordability crisis we have today. I don't blame anyone who did it, I blame government policy. Prime central London prices are below their 2014 peak: Will the capital boom again? If leasehold reform happens and commonhold is brought in, London flats will boom, hugely, and that's probably the biggest reason freeholders are fighting so ferociously against it. There are never enough flats in London. The super rich have been the first ones to suffer a true price crash in central London already. Many of them have fled to their yachts, licking their capital loss wounds. The super-rich partying in London was one of the things that made London night life so vibrant. I can't see it returning in the next five years, but I hope it does. What's happened in the last few years shows that they have minimal impact on wider London prices, only really spiking the very top of the market. No boom on the horizon: Lamdin says he can't see the London market recovering in the next five years What’s your best property investment? My first two investments in Brighton and Hastings, both in the 90s. Bought them, redecorated them, rented them out, sold them to the tenants for double what I paid, less than two years later. It was a combination of being ready to proceed very quickly as a buyer, meaning I bought them both very cheap, having the time to live in them while I redecorated, chose the tenants well, and got lucky with market timing. Seaside deal: Lamdin says his first two investments in Brighton and Hastings in the 1990s were his best ever property deals. Pictured The Grand Parade in Hastings And what’s your worst ever investment? Buying shares in Virgin Galactic. I've not had any dud property deals. What would you do if you inherited £100,000 tomorrow? I'd invest it four ways: 30 per cent in Gold, 30 per cent in bitcoin, 30 per cent in Tesla. The final 10 per cent I would invest into a young person's small business start up, expect to lose it, but hope to help someone get on their feet. In Musk we trust: Lamdin expects Tesla will outperform everything else in the next 10 years And finally... why Tesla? I bought Tesla in 2017 when everyone said it was a concept stock and they'd never get the Model 3 into production. The profit I made helped me buy my first plane. Just a small four seater, but still. I expect it will outperform everything else in the next 10 years, not because of cars, but because it's leading the world in AI and mass production of robots that will change employment forever, and every time they give Musk a share package with a target, he hits it. His latest package means he has to 10x their current share price. Whatever anyone thinks of Musk, he keeps repeatedly delivering the greatest engineering feats of all time, over and over. And hitting his targets. So, I'm expecting my Tesla holding to 10x over the next few years, at least.