Fancy owning not one luxury London pad, but 24? One of the capital’s most prestigious buy-to-let portfolios is being sold off after its owner ran “a couple of hundred thousand pounds” behind on his loan repayments.

At the peak of the market, the flats — whose tenants include members of the Saudi royal family — were valued at £80m. The collapse in house prices, however, wiped almost £20m off that, and Paul Roshan, a developer, is ready to sell them for just £6m to anyone prepared to take on his £56m debt.

Roshan, 35, began his career selling paintings at Bermondsey market, earning just £200 a week. Then, 17 years ago, his parents gave him £10,000, which he put down as a deposit on a £90,000 wreck in Tooting, southwest London. In the years that followed, he rode the boom, buying and selling properties, eventually focusing on the capital’s “golden triangle”: Kensington, Chelsea and Knightsbridge.

The flats, in which he claims to have invested £10m of his own money, are on some of London’s most expensive streets, including Lowndes Square, Ennismore Gardens and Eaton Place. They have been valued at between £1.3m and £6m each — the priciest being a penthouse flat in Kensington Court. Each is owned by a separate offshore company.

Roshan says that his properties have been decorated to the highest “hotel” standards, with heated marble floors, lacquered wood-panelled walls, chandeliers and 65in plasma-screen televisions. They were refurbished after each tenancy contract as part of a policy of providing the “best of the best” for his high-profile tenants, who have included the actor Matt Damon, star of the Jason Bourne films.

So why the sudden urge to divest himself of his portfolio? Roshan claims to be “tired” of managing all his properties. “I want to get out of it,” he says. “I don’t want to be dealing with the tenants’ issues any more.” He plans instead to focus on other projects, including two developments in Surrey and a house in Marbella let to Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former prime minister.

Yet Roshan also admits to being behind on payments on a £5m loan, one of several he has taken out against his properties. Records at Companies House show that R & A Property Developments Ltd, the company Roshan originally set up to take care of the flats, is in liquidation. Its replacement, Affluent Homes Ltd, is listed under a “proposal to strike off”. Roshan is keen to downplay this, insisting: “We’re just a little behind on our accounts.”

These are difficult times for buy-to-let landlords, especially those who funded their expansion during the boom years by taking advantage of the buoyant market to draw equity from existing properties. Although falling interest rates have eased the pain, plunging house prices have left many in or close to negative equity — that is, their portfolios are not worth as much as the loans secured against them.

David Salusbury, chairman of the National Landlords Association, warns that increasing numbers of buy-to-let investors are facing repossession. “This recession has already claimed a small but growing number of landlords who have faced financial difficulty,” he says.

Many of those in trouble own only a handful of properties; others, like Roshan, have accumulated a large number. Among several portfolios on the market are one with 11 top-end homes in Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Kensington, priced at £50m, and another with 196 flats in Bayswater, west London, for £85m.

Roshan says that anyone buying his properties will be expected to pay off some, but not all, of his £56m debt as part of the deal — but is unable to specify how much. “They will have to be someone of substance, with money in the bank,” he says. He claims already to have been approached by several investors, among them James Caan, who appears on the BBC series Dragons’ Den.

The sale is being handled by Elysium Skies, a company that specialises in distressed, quick sales. It is run by twin sisters Kathryn and Bryony Frost, former professional athletes.

- Elysium Skies; 020 7033 9343, elysium-skies.com

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