Landlords in Scotland statistics: FOI release

Information requested

An update to the published answer to the published answer to request FOI/202000090239 in particular to the breakdown of how many landlords there are on the register and how many properties they own in the same bandings as before.
The previous request had also asked for: 

• How many landlords in Scotland are pensioners
• How many landlords in Scotland own more than 2 properties
• How many landlords in Scotland own properties in a limited company which hasn’t been trading for 2 years.
• How many landlords in Scotland are classed as rural (e.g. farmers/estates) A breakdown of landlords by different groupings - pensioners etc...

Response

The answer to your question on the number of landlords in Scotland by the number of properties is provided below. This is based on information held by the Scottish Government as at June 2024, where there were approximately:

• 179,516 registered landlords with 1 Property (76% of all registrations)
• 29,623 registered landlords with 2 Properties (12% of all registrations)
• 27,988 registered landlords with 3 or more Properties (12% of all registrations)

The landlords with multiple registrations will tend to be large organisations and housing associations, with multiple properties across all of their registrations with different local authorities. Please note that these figures include individuals who jointly own property. Other landlords will have no properties, and this could be because they are in the process of buying property or because they are landlord agents, acting on behalf of the property owner. There were 237,705 registered Landlords as at June 2024. The figure for landlords reflects some data cleansing and changes in the number of landlords on the system.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not hold some of the information you have requested. Section 17(1) of FOISA (information not held) requires the Scottish Government to notify you if it does not have some of the information requested.

As stated in the reply to FOI/202000090239 the Scottish Government does not hold the following information:

• properties owned by limited companies not trading more than 2 years,
• number of rural landlords,
• number of landlords who are pensioners etc.
• a demographic break down of registered landlords

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information requested.

If you are interested in the information we were unable to provide you may wish to contact the data controllers for the information held on the database, contact details for the 32 Local Authorities is available on the landlord registration website at https://www.landlordregistrationscotland.gov.uk/localauthority-contact.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.