Property executives say the government’s encouragement of home ownership is putting it at odds with investors’ appetite for purpose-built rental homes, a fast-growing market that could help to address the UK’s housing shortage.

Kit Malthouse, the housing minister, told a conference in London that build-to-rent properties — developed by institutional owners for the express purpose of leasing to tenants rather than selling — could help to solve what he called “the most urgent, practical and indeed moral problem of our time in this country, which is to provide the homes that the next generation needs”.