Editor

I disagree strongly with Jan Ingham from Bedfordshire (‘Visitors bring money to area’, Letters, 15 October), who sought to justify second-home ownership in Wales by arguing that second-home owners—who should perhaps more accurately be called ‘extrahouse owners’—create jobs.

Jan pointed out that she uses local companies for maintenance. This ignores the fact that local residents also use such companies to maintain and improve their homes.

Extra-house owners deprive locals of access to homes by helping to push up prices.

Most people on local wages will be unable to compete with someone with more purchasing power from a more affluent area of the UK.

But the fundamental fact remains that its house prices that are wildly out of sync with other living costs.

Extra-house owners also remove properties from the rental market, with companies such as Airbnb playing a pivotal role in the lack of available housing for locals. A recent search on the Airbnb website for an “entire place” to rent in Machynlleth and its vicinity brought up 208 results! They include fashionable shepherd’s huts, yurts and other quirky types of accommodation, but also an awful lot of cottages and houses that should provide permanent homes for locals rather than temporary accommodation for holidaymakers.

In shocking contrast, there are few properties for let: a search on a popular property website brought up nine results within 15 miles of Machynlleth, six of which were for student bedrooms in Aberystwyth! I know of people who lost their home so that the landlord could rent it out on the more lucrative Airbnb market.

Finally, Jan’s claim that she returned an unoccupied house to a habitable state is rather self-congratulatory: I would embrace such an opportunity to create my own home but even a derelict house—of which there are many—is out of reach because the property market is simply out of control.

As another illustration of just how sick—and sickening—the housing market is, an article in your newspaper last year reported that there were over 1,000 empty properties in Ceredigion— all while people struggle to find permanent, affordable homes. Something’s got to change.

Dr A J Fitzgerald would-be resident of Mid Wales, living at parental home in Swansea

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