The Charity ‘Empty Homes’ reckons that around 205,000 houses in the UK are currently unoccupied and that 1.2 per cent are long term unoccupied.

This is clearly unacceptable, given the continuing increase in homelessness and the ascending cost of housing being faced by the young who are unable to get on the housing ladder at all, despite often being double income and hardworking. 

There are many reasons why this parlous state of affairs exists, ranging from greed to incompetence and stupidity. 

But in some cases legislation does not help. I know of one person who owns a house that has been empty for decades because of a right of way and access problem. 

Owners of adjoining common land which has to be crossed to gain access have demanded frankly unaffordable sums to allow a builder to access the property to restore it to habitability and have moreover offered to buy the house from the hapless stranded owner at a massively knockdown rate so that they can update it themselves and benefit from the subsequent increase in value, as they alone hold the key to releasing its potential. 

Meanwhile another home languishes unloved. And as if to compound the utter waste, the owner has to pay the unoccupied property Council Tax on a house they cannot afford to restore to habitability because of the expense of acquiring access rights that the builders a century ago could not have foreseen. 

It is only by bringing the house back to a habitable state that it would be mortgageable and therefore sellable. Catch 22.

I bought my first home when I was just 30. It was a three bedroomed cottage in Oxfordshire and cost about three times my then income, which was certainly no greater then most other young professionals of my age.

I cannot think of many homes that are currently available for a comparable sum for a young teacher, nurse, doctor let alone the majority of young people who earn even less.

What the answer is I do not know. But I do know that there has to be some strategy to deflate the absurdly overblown prices that property attracts in this area and to ease the restrictions that prevent many homes from being available to first time buyers and young families.