Over the past few years, many people have become enthralled by property market doomsters – the ones who predict catastrophic crashes with such certainty they grab headlines and rack up views.

I’m here to tell you to ignore them. Not because crashes never happen, but because the people making these predictions are almost never held accountable when they’re wrong.

Let’s take a specific example. In 2022, Charlie Lamdin ( property commentator, founder of Best Agent and presenter of the Moving Home with Charlie YouTube and TikTok channels) predicted that average UK house prices would fall 35% “peak to trough” – with the peak being summer 2022 and the trough arriving within two to three years.

He’s been admirably consistent in this view, repeating it throughout 2023 and 2024 while house prices refused to cooperate. Aside from this, he’s been a fantastic educator to many prospective movers regarding not over-pricing in the current climate.

So where are we now? The August 2022 peak saw average UK prices at £296,000 (before the ONS decided to re-reference the HPI) As of September 2025, they sit at around £271,500. That’s a decline of roughly 8% (if we ignore the re-referencing)- and prices have actually been rising again through much of 2024 and 2025. Not -35%.

Not even close to the -19% drop we saw during the Global Financial Crisis, when the entire Western banking system nearly collapsed and we were 30 minutes from entering the Dark Ages.

Are bankers throwing themselves off buildings? No, of course they’re not.

Here’s what’s actually happening in the mortgage market: Skipton launched a 100% LTV mortgage in 2023. April Mortgages launched another in May 2025. The Bank of England has just – literally two days ago – lowered capital requirements for banks from 14% to 13%. The FPC has loosened LTI restrictions, allowing individual lenders to exceed the 15% high-LTI cap. Lloyds has earmarked an extra £4bn for high loan-to-income lending. Nationwide says it can now lend to 10,000 more first-time buyers annually.

Does this sound like institutions bracing for a 35% crash?

These aren’t small players. These are the people with actual money on the line – billions of pounds of shareholder capital and depositor funds. They have entire risk departments, stress-testing teams, and regulatory oversight. They’re not loosening lending criteria because they fancy a laugh.

So, we’re left with two possibilities. Either every major lender, the Bank of England, the PRA, and the FCA are all in on a massive conspiracy to prop up the housing market – without a single whistle-blower emerging – while simultaneously other elements of the deep-state are unable to fill in potholes…

Or perhaps we shouldn’t build our financial plans around social media predictions from people who face no consequences when they’re wrong.

The crash may still come. I’m not predicting it won’t. But if buyers have been sitting on the sidelines since 2022 waiting for 35% off, they’ve watched prices dip 8% then recover, while their rent went up 25%.

That’s the cost of following advice from people who don’t have to live with the results.

Hold them to account. Remember what they said. And next time someone predicts the end of the world, ask them what happened to their last prediction and if they’re going to insure against the downside so you can make a claim…

Lewis Shaw is a mortgage broker and owner of Shaw Financial Services