A leading landlord has criticised the pressure groups and campaigners who call for landlords to be ‘eradicated’ from the housing market, saying their arguments don’t make sense and will reduce supply.

Marcus Selmon (main image), who was speaking at a recent gathering of larger-scale landlords (pictured) under the auspices of the Portfolio Landlords Action Network (PLAN) took issue in particularly with author Nick Bano.

Earlier this year he published a book – Against Landlords – within which he said “we want to ensure landlords have a sense of shame about their occupation and are embarrassed to be a landlord”.

Selmon noted at the meeting that no other type of business owner in the UK faces this kind of personalised attack.

Abolition

“These groups [and individuals] are to a lesser or greater degree calling for the abolition of landlords,” he said.

“This is all part and parcel of the sector being presented as individuals who exploit their tenants” – something he believes larger portfolio landlords should work together to counter.

Selmon said that while the National Residential Landlords Association does its best to represent individual private landlords’ views at Government level, the build-to-rent operators increasingly have the ear of Ministers because they present themselves as a corporate solution to the housing crisis backed by billions of pounds of funding.

Voice

But Selmon believes that PLAN members, who often have portfolios of a similar size to many BTR operators, should have a voice at the table too.

“That’s what PLAN is all about – trying to bring together landlords who are fully invested in the market and for whom it is their full time business and then find structures that are acceptable to the Government and the public and that enable us to be seen providing a valuable service to the private rented sector,” he said.

“We are small voice at the moment for landlords who have 75 properties or more, but I hope that we can be increasingly heard.”

The gathering, which was attended by over a dozen large portfolio landlords who between them operate some 15,000 properties, included presentations from finance expert Terry Pritchard and two Rugby stars, James Haskell and Paul Doran-Jones, from Town & Country Property Auctions.