According to the Hamptons Lettings Index, this represents a 363% increase over the last decade.
The report said the rise was in spite of investors making a up a smaller share of home purchases. Investors accounted for 10.8% of purchases in 2025.
Hamptons said the rise in incorporations started in 2016, when changes in mortgage interest relief began to be phased out for higher-rate taxpayers owning BTL properties in personal names.
The firm said that currently, over three-quarters of new BTL purchases are made via limited companies. It added that rising incorporation numbers were partially due to landlords transferring existing BTL properties into corporate structures.
Hamptons said the number of new companies registered hit a peak of 6,493, the highest monthly figure on record, and over 5,000 companies were established in 10 out of the 12 months during last year.
The report added that this momentum was continuing into 2026, with around 5,922 new BTL limited companies set up in January 2026. This is up 11% on last year.
Hamptons said that by the end of 2025, the total number of BTL registered companies had reached 443,272, up from the 91,278 recorded in 2016.
In England and Wales, there were around 755,042 property titles held in a BTL company, a rise from 272,964 a decade ago.
Hamptons estimated that around one-and-a-half million BTL properties were held in a limited company structure.
Limited companies increasingly being used for co-investment by shareholders
Looking at ownership structures, the 66,587 companies formed in 2025 were owned by 103,280 shareholders.
Around 42% of companies established last year had more than one shareholder, which compares to 36% in 2016.
Hamptons said this showed that limited companies “increasingly enable co-investment”.
From a regional perspective, 31% of companies had their headquarters in London but their portfolio expands beyond the capital.
More than half of purchases made by London-based companies were outside of the capital, Hamptons said.
Average rent for newly let home falls by 0.2% YOY in 2026
The average rent for a newly let home fell by 0.2% in January 2026 to an average of £1,366 per calendar month.
Hamptons said this shows signs that rental growth is “beginning to moderate”.
The report noted that average tenants renewing a contract saw their rent rise by 2.8% year-on-year to £1,305 per calendar month.
Hamptons said the slowdown in rent increases had been driven by the South of England, with Inner London falling for 13 months in a row, Outer London for eight months and South East seeing four months of declines.
Rental properties in these regions made up about a third of rental properties in Britain, the report said.
In the East of England and the South West, rental growth on newly let homes has been below 1% for the past four months.
A similar trend is being seen in Scotland, with annual rents contracting by 0.2% for the first time since 2020. The report said this is due to the unwinding of steep rises linked to rent control imposed by the Scottish government.
Average rents for newly let homes in Yorkshire and the Humber have been falling for six months, and these fell 1.4% in January to £915 per calendar month.
Shift to limited company set to continue in 2026
Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, said landlords’ shift towards limited company ownership continued through 2025 and “shows little sign of slowing this year”.
She continued: “While the tougher tax treatment introduced in 2016 sparked the initial move into corporate structures, five years of frozen personal allowances, combined with the impact of higher mortgage rates, which company landlords can fully offset against their tax bill, have fuelled the more recent surge.
“As more landlords find themselves pulled into the 40% income tax bracket, paying corporation tax at 19% or even 25% has become increasingly attractive. Today, limited company ownership makes financial sense for the majority of landlords, with around 75-80% of all new buy-to-let purchases now made via a company.”
Beveridge noted that there wasn’t a “one-size-fits-all approach”, as for landlords who earn no income beyond their rents and are lower-rate taxpayers, owning property in personal names can “still be the better option”, especially as above-inflation increases have increased Companies House filing fees.
“While newly agreed rents continue to record small annual falls, the pace of decline has stabilised. And, as has been the case for the last two years, tenants renewing their contracts are seeing the larger rises. With rent increases due to be open to tribunal challenge from May, many landlords are using the months ahead to ensure their rents are aligned as closely as possible to market levels,” she noted.
