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The UK housing market, like a wayward parachutist caught in the upper branches of a tall tree, is dangling dangerously in the wind and it's not going to take much of a gust to send it crashing to the ground.
A gust, if you'll excuse the altophobic analogy, that might well be about to strike in the guise of the impending changes to Stamp Duty charges.
When the UK Government was hurling everything it could lay its hands on last year at the monster of recession, a temporary raising of the tax threshold from £125k to £175k was just one of its many hastily constructed home-made weapons.
Quite how much such a hiatus (or 'holiday' as the mainstream media so cheerfully refer to it) had on the market, is anyone's guess. There was far too much going on in the heat of the battle for anybody to really notice.
But, mark my words, its removal at the end of December, will be as noticeable as a mobile phone ringing in a Trappist monastery.” And about as unwanted too.
When 35% more first-time buyers – a pasty looking crew even on a good day, but market saviours all the same - suddenly realise that on top of the disproportionately high deposit they've already scraped together, they're expected to find the best part of another £2k in Stamp Duty, they're going to scream.
And the ripple effect of that little cacophony might just be more than the market's tentative recovery will bear. Indeed, here's a suggestion, instead of calling it Stamp Duty, let's call it Stomp Duty, because that's exactly what it's going to do to those tender green shoots of recovery everyone keeps whispering about – stomp all over them.
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