The idea we can build ourselves out of a housing shortage (Cameron and Miliband vote bidding war) is fanciful. Rampant house inflation has created a speculative bubble where we imagine ourselves richer by burdening future generations with unsustainable debt.

This is fools gold and does nothing to change Britain’s poor record of global competitiveness as we pay ourselves more and more for less and less real estate.

The solution is to use the housing stock we have more effectively and discourage speculative investment. The aim should be to suppress house price rises and allow our young people to buy a house.

The Government should amend the capital gains tax; - to negate any house value inflation gain on second and subsequent homes (other than where provable value has been added). This will save our rural communities at a stroke.

- to stop the speculative buy-to-let mania through requiring all tenancies to be long term and secured and punitively tax any inflation gains unless the property has been held for decades. This should encourage the institutions to invest rather than individuals and stop the rental market churn as landlords chase higher rents to fund another house purchase.

- to restrict all non-UK citizens to buying one new house (as in Australia) that they must live in and pay full corporate tax on even if it’s bought via a shell overseas company.

- to encourage owners of high street shops to stop using upper floors as cardboard box storage spaces and turn them into apartments, thus bringing the high street to life by creating places for people to live in.

We’re not making any more land in the UK. Enabling the rich to buy more property as an investment is madness. We have to give our young an opportunity to buy a home.

Using what we’ve got better has to be the way of leaving a viable legacy to our children, not an inflated house sale that their children can’t afford.

Why aren’t any party leaders proposing this? I would vote for it!

Bob Swindle (via email)