The housing market is undergoing a period of rapid change, with a leading campaign group urging the government to do more to capitalise on the number of empty homes.

Recent property price data has pointed to a slowdown in the rate of growth and even, in some cases, reverses, as the market cools for the first time in decades following years of dramatic double digit growth in most regions across the country.

Now the Empty Homes Agency is looking at how to respond to the changing market and is urging the government to do the same.

Henry Oliver, policy advisor at the Empty Homes Agency, said: "The housing market is changing rather radically at the moment and one of the things that we are completely unclear about, and trying to prepare ourselves for, is what it’s going to be like campaigning on empty homes in a depressed or falling housing market.

"It could be a problem because it could mean that the most marginal properties, which are least viable for borrowing and so on, are going to go down the tubes. But it also means, for example, that there’s going to be a lot of commercial property coming up for potential re-use…and we would be looking for innovative ways of tacking that, for instance what’s called Short Life Housing."

Short Life Housing is a social housing scheme which focuses on buildings which are going to have something else done to them at some point – for example being refurbished or demolished – offering accommodation for the interim period to those who need it.

The government has said it will review council tax discounts for empty homes, which are currently exempt from council tax for up to 12 months after they become empty.