Brown and Darling mess it up again.

A friend is trying to sell his house down south in the £500-600,000 bracket. He actually got two offers about a fortnight ago, pretty good in this market.
Except.....
We then have Darling saying he's thinking about a stamp duty holiday - and it stops dead. This is not really surprising - wouldn't you want to save £20,000 for hanging on a bit?
Of course, the so-called holiday will actually have no effect - people will simply look to get marginally higher prices for the same property - which will slow up any sales anyway.
The only things that will make the housing market revive are:
1) Much lower house prices
2) Banks actually giving people money as opposed to saying they are going to.( I friend tells me he has been waiting for a facility letter for more than 6 weeks - he phones every day to be told its in the system)
3) A belief that prices are not going to fall any more.
However clever Brown and Darling think they are ( NB: they're not, they are stupid) , until people's perception is that prices might rise, they won't buy.
And they certainly won't buy if they think they can avoid giving this government any stamp duty by waiting.
My prediction? Don't even start looking until later in 2009.