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Both West London and (surprisingly) East London had many unoccupied houses a few years back. Even in areas around Hackney road / Bethnal Green, which I would guess are not even really investment properties but more like long-term wealth assets.

Agreed on the overheated market. My argument was that these properties are completely off the market and the owners won't panic-sell them

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London is generally nowhere near the top of the list of places with empty housing in the UK. It's "many" only because of the relative density.

As of April 2022, only about 34k properties were classed as long term vacant in London out of around 3.7m housing units, with Southwark, Newham and Barnet at the top of the lists, largely because of redevelopment projects that meant clearing out tenants first, as well as time to get people into new developments afterwards.

<1% empty housing is not unusually high for an area experiencing a lot of renewing and new builds.

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