Estate agents have been counting the minutes until Gordon Brown unleashes his kindlier capital gains tax regime. The abrupt deflation of confidence in the property market last year was marked first by the retreat of buy-to-let investors, just as the advantageous changes were announced. Such buyers had accounted for about one in ten purchases in the recent boom years.

Now experts predict that other market forces - the lack of credit, worries about the economy, and the drip, drip of small monthly house price falls - threaten to do what the Government's rural advocate believed was impossible: kill off the popular aspiration of second-home ownership. As the mood in the market darkens, agents doubt that even a snap reduction in the capital gains tax bill for second-home owners and buy-to-let investors will be enough to entice them back in to the sagging market.

But is this good news for the aspiring first-time buyers and the young families who have been squeezed by the influx of cash-rich investors from elsewhere?

Undoubtedly, the affordability crisis is most acute in those appealing areas where the number of second homes is highest, in the South West, where one in every 44 properties is a second home, and in London. Those with a hunger for ownership but a limited budget will have noted that in places such as Sandbanks, in Dorset, prices have fallen as much as 10 per cent since last summer. Yet as Yolande Barnes of Savills says: “Even if the cost of a house in Rock, in Cornwall, was to drop from £5 million to £2 million, it is not going to make much difference to a local person.”

Elsewhere the prices of a more ordinary home have proved to be stubborn. This huge mismatch between what a starter property costs and what a typical wage might be will not dissipate quickly anywhere in the country.

Second homes account for a tiny 1.1 per cent of all the homes in England – or just 365,000 properties. Restricting this form of ownership - which the Liberal Democrat MP Matthew Taylor is reported to be advocating – may do a little to restore the hope of a home for young locals. But of greater importance is the Government’s ability to increase the building of new affordable homes. Sadly, this is at great risk: nervous housebuilders, acutely aware of the mood of the market, are reducing their construction commitments.

In any case, gusto will need to make a reappearance in the market before this latest bout of experimental Government policy making can be fully tested. Such enthusiasm is in short supply.

If owners hang on to their weekend cottages or holiday homes, rather than risk being unable to buy one when the market improves, there is little chance of agents being able to restock their windows.

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