Offshore Ownership

Private Eye have produced a neat searchable map of offshore property ownership in England & Wales. Enter your postcode and you can see which properties in your area are owned by legal entities registered outside of the UK. In some cases what turns up is entirely legitimate - why would Lidl not be registered in Germany? In other cases...I'm struggling to think of reasons why so many British properties are owned by companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. Surely nothing to do with avoiding UK taxation...