The straw to break the camel's back?

The most interesting statistic I've seen for a while is that buy-to-let landlords now account for 50 percent of repossessions.

To be cynical, perhaps these guys feel they can just walk away - after all they don't actually live in the house. But it suggests that some of the people who have bought into thin yields over the past few years are now doing their sums - and potential capital gains don't justify the gap between the rental yield and the mortgage cost.

I suspect it's the buy-to-let market that might set this housing market off downwards. Last time round, in the late 1980s, it was the removal of MIRAS that seems to have done it - leading to a sudden splurge of buying and an equally sudden absence of activity, and then, as prices started down, repossession of first-time buyers who had been too stretched.

There's always one straw that breaks the camel's back. Could this be it?