Editor

Mr Moss yet again would lead us into the fog of statistical irrelevance, rather than comment upon the scam of the housing market (Views, 10 December). He lauds the financial acumen of those who anticipate their equity increase, but does not identify the scale of that ‘shrewdness’.

Applied to sole owners, his comment would be traditional, if selfish, but ‘buy to let’ is a growing cancer in the housing market.In 1998 there were 28,000 buy-to let mortgages, which increased to1,300,000 in 2010.

Buy-to-let policy has hoovered up 2,200,000 starter homes for young couples, and 466 companies and individuals own five or more houses. To top it all, 40 per cent of ex-council houses are now buy to let.

Just as ‘Test and trace’ has been privatised for purely ideological reasons, so has the housing market, and that is only one of several deliberate political distortions that benefit those with substantial property holdings.

Roger Louvet Porthmadog