With home improvement programmes dominating the primetime TV schedules and house prices considered a respectable, even mandatory, dinner party topic, it is scarcely surprising that in the past decade Britain has become a nation of landlords.

According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the number of residential mortgages in Britain has grown by 1.3m since 1996 with the vast bulk of the increase – 1m – composed of buy-to-let (BTL) loans. In contrast, the CML says, the number of owner-occupier mortgages has shrunk by about 40,000 annually over the past five years.