Landlords who use a limited company own more than three times as many properties on average than landlords who hold shares in their own name, according to the latest landlord trends data from Pegasus Insight.
Data from the fourth quarter of 2025 shows that more than one in five landlords now manage at least part of their portfolio through a public company.
It shows they are also more reliant on buy-to-let loans, reflecting the more capital-intensive nature of their portfolios.
Limited company landlords are twice as likely to own multi-occupancy houses (HMOs), with 35% owning at least one HMO, compared to 17% of individual landlords.
They are also more commercially involved, with 27% working as full-time or part-time landlords, compared to 14% of those who own real estate personally.
Behavioral differences are also becoming increasingly apparent, with the latest data showing that three-quarters of corporate landlords have increased rents in the past year, compared to 61% of individual landlords.
Taken together, Pegasus suggests that the data suggests that landlords operating through limited companies are increasingly becoming more like small-scale real estate companies than traditional private investors.
Pegasus insight Managing director and founder Mark Long says: “This is not about a sudden increase in the number of businesses, but a steady structural divergence. Limited business landlords operate at a different scale, with different financing models and different levels of engagement with the market.”
“They tend to manage larger portfolios with more debt and often more complex portfolios, which obviously creates a different risk profile and a different set of support needs.”
“For lenders and policymakers, this is important because it shows that the PRS is no longer a single, uniform market. Ownership structure is becoming an increasingly important lens through which to understand the behavior, resilience and even future supply of landlords.”