People with one prop­erty still dom­in­ate rental sec­tor

The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment con­cluded 2025 by responding to a free­dom of inform­a­tion request on the cur­rent level of land­lord num­bers. Its Hog­manay response was reveal­ing and high­lighted that the private ren­ted sec­tor (PRS) remains largely dom­in­ated by people with one prop­erty.

The FOI stated that “as of 28 August 2025, there were approximately: 158,376 registered land­lords with one prop­erty (71 per cent of all regis­tra­tions); 30,452 registered land­lords with two prop­er­ties (14 per cent of all regis­tra­tions); and 31,223 registered land­lords with three or more prop­er­ties (14 per cent of all regis­tra­tions).” This is a total of 220,051 land­lords.

This reveals that while the sec­tor retains its his­toric roots of grow­ing out of indi­vidu­als own­ing one prop­erty – often to be used to sup­ple­ment their retire­ment – it is evolving into one with indi­vidu­als and groups own­ing mul­tiple prop­er­ties as well as the increase in the num­ber of build-to-rent (BTR) homes.

As recently as Janu­ary 2022 the num­ber of land­lords in Scot­land was 239,566. These latest num­bers reveal a fall of 19,515 in under four years. This decline will have many reas­ons, with some leav­ing because they have reached retire­ment age and were always going to leave the sec­tor at this age. Oth­ers will be influ­enced by the changes to tax­a­tion, the increase in costs, and the dif­fi­culty in mak­ing a reas­on­able return. The rest may be leav­ing due the increased issues caused by chan­ging legis­la­tion and reg­u­la­tion mak­ing it a much harder place to oper­ate.

However, des­pite the fall­ing num­bers of land­lords there has been a rising level of prop­er­ties avail­able to let. In Janu­ary 2022 there were 339,525 prop­er­ties avail­able and this has now risen to 350,637 registered homes.

This will be for a num­ber of reas­ons includ­ing the rise in BTR prop­er­ties as well as the expan­sion of land­lords and investors who recog­nise that the depar­ture of some indi­vidu­als from the sec­tor can provide an oppor­tun­ity for growth in a mar­ket which offers the chance for reas­on­able returns for those with more prop­er­ties.

The reduc­tion in the num­ber of land­lords is not con­fined to Scot­land. In the rest of the UK there has been a steady decline in all regions. Between 2022-23 and the 2024-25 the num­ber of land­lords fell from 2.89 mil­lion to 2.82m – a drop of 2.4 per cent indic­at­ing an accel­er­a­tion in the rate of decline in recent years.

But what this tells us is that while the make-up of the mar­ket­place may be shift­ing that does not mean that the PRS as a whole is in decline. The future is unlikely to com­prise indi­vidu­als own­ing one prop­erty but be made up of indi­vidu­als and groups oper­at­ing mul­tiple homes, in many loc­a­tions and util­ising the eco­nom­ies of scale to make the mar­ket viable. There is also the issue of reg­u­la­tion and legis­la­tion which, for an indi­vidual, can be almost impossible to keep up with but for an organ­isa­tion is much easier to be on top of and com­pli­ant in a rap­idly chan­ging envir­on­ment. So, while this is a period of change it may also provide oppor­tun­ity for indi­vidu­als and organ­isa­tions who recog­nise that value remains in the sec­tor if you oper­ate at scale.