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I am starting to wish there was something more cheery to write about at the moment. The media often get accusing fingers pointed at them when things turn bad and now is no different. But burying our heads in the sand is not going to do any good.

So it is with a heavy heart that I make the sombrerealisation that some of you are soon going to be out of a job. At least, that is what we are being constantly told.

John Charcol seems to have led the way. Its "reorganisation" as PRs and HR managers call it in the hope of steering away from a bad headline, has already seen some familiar faces go and I would not be surprised if dozens more follow from the back office.

With estate agents reporting housing transactions are at a 30-year low, there is simply not enough business to go around. It is the nature of the supply and demand of capitalism that human capital must pay.

For each of those individuals it is sad. However, the mortgage industry has become a fattened calf. It has made a lot of people very well off indeed.

Few have sympathy with hearing 15,000 estate agents are likely to lose their jobs, especially those of us that live in London and have Foxtons' garish minis permanently parked outside our homes.

But for advisers it is another matter. You have already been treated shoddily by banks and building societies in their desperate hunger for profits.

Businesses like John Charcol can cope. They are big enough and bold enough to ride out the storm. A bean counter somewhere will work out how many heads need to go and some poor middle manager will be tasked with wielding the axe.

Smaller advisers face a very tough time. Their decision may not be how many jobs must go but if they can stay open at all.

Some of these may be very good businesses. There is likely to be nothing wrong with their model. It is the current tumbling market that is stripping profits away. Because it is the market - and there is no clear indication when this current falling demand and plummeting prices will end - it is going to be an even tougher decision for some advisers.

It is not as if there are fundamental problems in how you have been operating or something you could do to change and turn the business around.

But how long can you continue in the hope the market will recover? Will this last a year? Two years? If there is one thing this current situation has taught us is housing economists know nothing.

I hope many of you make it through the storm, but the reality is some of you will sink without a trace.

FSA on a feeding frenzy

I returned from holiday to find my email rammed with a flurry of announcements from the FSA. It has been doing its own bit to trim the size of the adviser population by striking off those caught in breach of the rules.

This is all the result of its seemingly interminable investigation in non-conforming lending. Its actions are to be applauded. More dodgy advisers have been driven out for submitting false loan applications and generally undermining the good work done by others.

A holy alliance

The merger of Chelsea and Catholic building societies raises one question – will we suddenly see hoardes of parents taking out Chelsea savings accounts and attending the AGM in the hope it will get their kids into a good local school?

Okay, bad joke. But once again consolidation in the building societies sector has reared its head. Sometimes I think mutuals almost have a charter that says they must bail each other out in tough times.

This sort of merger is inevitable. Chelsea is a big fish, Catholic has a measly £44m of assets. Some advisers do that amount of business in a year. I would not be surprised if in a decade we saw the number of building societies whittled down to about 30 – about half of the current amount.

Size brings bargaining power and a new financially savvy generation will increasingly look for price over the security and specialism that some of these smaller mutuals offer.