North West landlord company tracker.
More landlords now hold property through a limited company than ever before. We counted every active landlord company registered in the North West, borough by borough, to see where they are concentrated and where new ones are still being set up. We will update this page every quarter.
Last updated 10 November 2026. Next update February 2027.
The headline figures.
49,799
Active landlord companies across the North West.
6,882
New companies set up between November 2025 and October 2026, down 7.1 per cent on the 7,411 of the year before.
3,317
New companies in Greater Manchester, down 9.9 per cent. Liverpool City Region: 1,227, down 2.6 per cent.
208
Landlord companies per 1,000 privately rented households in Trafford, the highest in the region.
The fall is in line with the national slowdown. Hamptons reported buy-to-let company formations down 8 per cent in the first eight months of 2026, as reported by The Negotiator.
Trafford leads on concentration, followed by Stockport (139 per 1,000), Ribble Valley (125) and Bury (122). Against the regional fall, new landlord companies rose in Knowsley (up 34.5 per cent), Blackburn with Darwen (up 12.8 per cent), West Lancashire (up 10.9 per cent) and Wirral (up 9.7 per cent).
Top ten boroughs, landlord companies per 1,000 privately rented households.
Every figure here is also in the table below, which can be sorted on any column.
The full table.
Sorted by landlord companies per 1,000 privately rented households, highest first. Click any heading to sort by it.
What it means.
A limited company is now the default structure for many landlords buying new property, mostly because of how mortgage interest is taxed for individual landlords.
A company is not always the right choice, and moving an existing portfolio into one can trigger stamp duty and capital gains tax, so landlords should take tax advice first. We are brokers, not tax advisers.
For lenders, a borrower set up as a special purpose vehicle company is now routine. Our page on SPV mortgages covers what they look for.
Method.
We counted companies on the Companies House register with SIC code 68100 (buying and selling of own real estate) or 68209 (letting and operating of own or leased real estate) whose registered office is in each local authority, using the Companies House Basic Company Data snapshot for 1 November 2026.
"Active" includes companies with a proposal to strike off. New companies are those incorporated in each 12-month period. To avoid counting accountants' and formation agents' addresses as local activity, we excluded any postcode with 50 or more such companies registered at it. A registered office is not always where a company owns property.
Privately rented households are from Census 2021 (ONS table TS054). Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness are shown without a rate because their boundaries post-date the Census tables used.
Other published counts differ because they use more SIC codes, postcode areas rather than local authorities, and no adjustment for clustered registered offices. Property Tax Partners' UK SPV Incorporation Index (September 2026), for example, puts live North West companies at 69,870.
Sources: Companies House Basic Company Data, and ONS Census 2021 table TS054 via Nomis. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Setting up or refinancing through a limited company?
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