National Assembly for Wales

Local Government regulations define a home as “empty” if it has been unoccupied for over 6 months. As the process of selling a home can take longer than 6 months, the figures quoted in this answer include houses that are on the market for sale.

Since the introduction of council tax premiums for long-term empty homes and second homes, data on the number of chargeable, long term empty properties has been collected annually. This data is presented in the table below for the period 2017-18 to 2021-22.

Number of chargeable, long term empty properties by local authority, 2017-18 to 2021-22

Source: Council Tax dwellings (CT1) data collection, Welsh Government

Prior to this, the majority of local authorities were not applying discounts and not therefore necessarily recording this information consistently. As such, data for the years prior to 2017-18 are not available on a comparable basis.

However, data relating to the total number of private sector dwellings that had been vacant for more than 6 months was collected for 2009-10 to 2015-16 as part of the National Strategic Indicators data collection.

The National Strategic Indicators were a set of indicators used to measure the performance of local authorities at a national level. Data for indicator PSR/004 (the total number of private sector dwellings that had been vacant for more than 6 months at 1 April) for 2011-12 to 2015-16 is presented below.

However, note that these figures should not be compared directly with the council tax (CT1) data for 2017-18 to 2021-22 provided in the table as they are sourced from distinct data collections with differing underlying methodologies.