It’s a good rule of thumb that people with no foresight usually become surprised, indignant – and then stupid – when the inevitable happens. (See the post re Greece and insulin supplies). The current ‘dash to beat the Budget’/profit from the HIPS abolition on property sales is a classic example.

People are expecting everything from huge CGT increases to perhaps even the application of CGT to all house sales, be they second home or only caravan. I have it on authority about as good as it gets that – as of last Wednesday – the idea was pretty certainly to have a small CGT rise for basic rate taxpayers (ie, the retired) and then one or two much higher tiers for those defined by Vince Cable as the wealthy classes.

In other words, if as a retiree with a second home (looking for income-capital) you were convinced that CGT was going to double, then there might be some case for rushing to sell. For everyone else, to be frank, there’s no reason at all to rush into anything….and every good reason to do nothing. What puzzles me is why (as alleged by some media earlier this week) anyone would be rushing to buy the places that these old folks are rushing to sell.

I’ve yet to pick up any signals from anyone anywhere that stamp duty is about to go up. Not only would it be an extremely unpopular move, it would most likely hit the young and poor rather than the tycoons. So why on earth would anyone (apart from the force majeur of insolvency requiring a downtrade) want to buy a house at the moment? The abolition of HIPS?

You would have to be an idiot to buy a house now. Or, to be more flexible about it, you’d have to fall insanely in love with a property to buy now. I’ve felt for years that this is an excellent reason to buy, if only because commonsense says that if you love it, thousands of others will when you come to sell. But even in that scenario, you’d have to prepared to live in the house (and watch its value falling) for a decade – and perhaps more.

The usual rules don’t apply any more in investments, and especially not in the domestic property market. I know we’ve all been told this five times over the last forty years, but as the old Jewish joke has it, “Now you should worry”: this time the big change is for real.

The reasons are numerous: zero credit supply, high unemployment, high salary-to-price ratios, real falling long-term wealth as a nation, no reason for Europeans to buy, Europeans with no money to buy, a huge surplus of keys-back auctions about to flood onto the market, inevitably rising interest rates and…..deflation.

UK inflation has risen alarmingly in recent months (see Slog piece earlier in the week) but the long-term outlook favours a deflationary result. Reading across the piece among specialist and national titles over the last 24 hours, the general feeling is for stability and even price rises. There is even anecdotal evidence here and there that some buyers are desperate to get on board. Trust me, they are boarding the Titanic.

The best bet now is to change your mind, not your property. If you can, see your house as a home for your family, or dotage or both: for many years to come, the age of House As Pension is drawing rapidly to a close.