Who owns your street?

01 · What this is90,949 titles held by overseas companies

HM Land Registry publishes a list of every registered property title in England and Wales whose legal owner is a company incorporated outside the UK. The version used here is the full file for November 2026. It holds 90,949 titles. A title is a legal registration, not a home: it can be one flat, a house, a shop, an office block, a field or a whole estate. Individuals, UK companies and charities are not in the list.

I placed each title in its small area (LSOA, about 1,500 people) from its postcode and divided by the number of homes on the Council Tax list. 66,913 titles (74%) have a postcode that finds a small area; the other 24,036, often land, are counted in their district only. Across England and Wales there are 3.3 overseas-company titles per 1,000 homes, about one for every 300 homes.

02 · WhereCentral London, and then almost everywhere

The City of London has the highest rate (175 titles per 1,000 homes, though it has few homes), then Westminster (73) and Kensington and Chelsea (55). Those two boroughs alone hold 14,525 titles, 16% of the total, with under 1% of the homes. Outside London the highest district rate is in Salford (10.1 per 1,000).

The titles are far more bunched together than homes are. Half of the titles that can be placed in a small area sit in just 744 small areas, 2.1% of the total. 61% of small areas have none at all. Some of the very highest small areas are single buildings sold as many separate units: in 4 of the 10 highest, one company holds more than half the titles.

03 · WhoJersey, the British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and the Isle of Man

The companies come from 131 named places. Four hold 71% of all titles: Jersey (24,372), the British Virgin Islands (18,665), Guernsey (12,216) and the Isle of Man (9,632). Counting all the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories, it is 76%. Holding property through an overseas company is legal, and companies do it for many different reasons, which this list cannot tell apart.

04 · What kind of placeDearer, flatter, newer

Comparing small areas inside the same district, overseas-company titles are more common where more homes are in the top Council Tax bands, where more homes are flats, and where more were built since 2009. Ten more percentage points of top-band homes go with 29% more titles, ten more points of flats with 30% more, and ten more points of new homes with 10% more. All three hold in each of 18 checks, including without London, and a placebo that shuffles titles at random within districts shows nothing. This describes where the titles are; it does not show why.

05 · WhenThe file is a snapshot

The file only holds titles owned today, with the date the current owner was added. Owners added in 2017 are the most common (6,544 titles). Since 2022 15,551 titles have been added. In August 2022 the Register of Overseas Entities began to require these companies to name their beneficial owners at Companies House. Titles sold on are no longer in the file, so older years look smaller than they were.

06 · CaveatsWhat this cannot say

• Titles are not homes, and their size varies hugely. A single title can be a whole office block or a field.
• The list covers companies incorporated overseas. Property owned from abroad through UK companies, trusts or in a person's own name is not in it.
• Price paid is given for 38% of titles and is the price at registration, not today's value.
• The Council Tax bands that describe each area are based on 1991 values in England and 2003 values in Wales.
• Small areas with few homes, like the City of London, can show very high rates from a handful of buildings.