The chancellor Rishi Sunak has made a savvy move in extending the stamp duty holiday for a further three months, to be confirmed in his forthcoming Budget. Despite leaving the industry dangling until the very last minute over whether he would extend it from the end of March he has finally come through. But the question we are already asking is ‘what comes next?’.

The pressure to get deals done has been intense, with prospective homeowners within the £500k bracket racing to meet the deadline and save thousands in tax. Our biggest fear was that deals would fall off the edge of the cliff and not get through in time – but the cliff edge is still there.

Surely it would have been far better not to set a final date because, if anything, the cliff edge hasn’t receded, it’s now even higher!

What we don’t know is if the rumoured extension will apply only to those transactions already in the pipeline, creating a tapered effect, or whether it will apply to new transactions too.

Inevitably, there will be many people who delayed selling because they were worried about letting viewers into their home, who will want to rush to market as their confidence returns. If this does happen, the stamp duty extension will probably be too late for them. The conveyancers can’t keep up with the workload, so deals won’t get through in time.

The Centre for Policy Studies wants to see stamp duty scrapped, or the threshold increased to £500k, although it says this would cost the country £3bn.

I agree it would have been better to have abolished stamp duty completely for the time being to keep property sales steady, rather than everyone rushing to buy and sell in a market where stock levels can’t keep up, inflating prices.

The theory is that come the end of June, life will be getting ‘back to normal’, most of the adult population will have had their first vaccine, if not both; the retail, hospitality and travel sectors will be getting back to business – and estate agents won’t need the Stamp Duty support they’ve been given to date (for which, I’m sure, we’ve all been grateful).

But I can see that cliff face crumbling with furlough over, job losses spiralling and the government looking at ways to refill its coffers. Government borrowing this financial year is now standing at over £270 billion – and that’s got to be paid back. There’s now speculation that corporation tax will rise significantly, which means we’re all going to get clobbered, one way or the other. Stamp duty receipts were down to £540m for the last three months of 2020, despite a 14% rise in transactions.

So although the economy is improving and the pound has hit a three-year high after the prime minister revealed his roadmap to recovery, we still need to remain cautious. The effects of an economic Long Covid will be disastrous for our industry.

Let’s issue a rallying call to the government to abolish stamp duty. Give us some breathing space so we can all get back into our offices and do what we do best, selling properties and talking to our customers. It’s been a long old year, one like no other. But we’re ready now to get back to business as usual.

Paul Smith is chief executive officer of Spicerhaart.