There are an estimated 1m empty homes in the UK, and as empty properties officer for Westminster council, Paul Palmer is responsible for about 3,000 of them. Every day, he visits some of the ritziest addresses in the capital and does his best to get them lived in again. What makes his job unique is the staggering value of the properties on his books: some of his Mayfair mansions are worth as much as £50m, even in their dilapidated state. What makes his job difficult is that many of the biggest and most expensive are owned not by dusty old dowagers down on their luck but by mystery investors hiding their identities behind offshore companies.

“I feel it is a tragedy,” says Palmer. Many of these buildings have wonderful histories, and are part of our heritage. For them to be left vacant and unloved for a such a long time, pawns in a real-life game of Monopoly, is disgraceful.” The properties usually aren’t abandoned for reasons which might prompt sympathy. Palmer believes many elusive owners don’t have the slightest intention of bringing them back to life. “So often offshore owners have little or no interest in the property as a building – it is merely an asset to be traded as they see fit,” he says, adding that offshore firms are very tricky to track down.

Take the Park Lane townhouses, which Palmer estimates are worth £10m apiece. The key leaseholds on each are held by Konzeo Ltd and Weleta Ltd, two companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a tax haven in the Caribbean. Both firms ignored multiple letters from Palmer asking them to explain why the buildings were unoccupied and threatening to issue a compulsory purchase order – until a gang of squatters, plus their dogs, moved in and were pictured on the front page of the Sun in January.

Builders appeared after the squatters were evicted, but Palmer says they were on site for a only few days and have never returned. “It’s just the same situation as before,” he says, peering through the letterbox nine months on, “only now they’ve left the lights on. Helen Pidd, The Guardian.

Meanwhile

1 million – The number of homes expected to be empty in the UK this year

1,770,116 – The number of people waiting for housing in England

85,000 – Estimated number of homes to be built in 2008/09, 54 per cent down on the previous year

75,000 – Number of repossessions predicted for 2009
Inside Housing.

Housing shouldn’t be an investment opportunity it’s one of life’s basics. Even with the recent falls in property prices I cannot see how many young people will ever afford a place to live, the alternatives are private landlords or an interminable waiting list.