Fergus and Judith Wilson, have sold their property empire of hundreds of homes in Kent to a foreign consortium for more than £250m, according to The Guardian.

In a statement to the newspaper, Fergus Wilson said: “We reached an agreement today with a consortium of buyers to sell our entire portfolio for a figure exceeding £250m. The consortium is foreign and not of any one specific nationality.”

He said prices for houses on his estates “have been rising due to the shortage of available properties on the market”, but added that he had “taken steps to ensure the property prices in Ashford, Maidstone and Folkestone are not adversely affected” and that the sale would make no difference to existing tenants.

The Wilsons have been building their property empire since the mid-1990s and at one point the couple were buying several homes a day.

The couple have been at the centre of several controversies, the most newsworthy being in January 2014 when they announced they would be evicting all their tenants on housing benefit, preferring to let to eastern Europeans instead.