Home › Sectors › 12 September 2026
Property files more accounts than any other industry, and a quarter do not balance
237,977 sets of property company accounts across 90 publishing days. It is comfortably the largest thing on the register.
No industry files more accounts in Britain than property. Across 90 publishing days, 237,977 sets of accounts came from companies letting, trading, developing or managing it, which is roughly one filing in five. Of those, 50,202 reported liabilities larger than assets, or 21.1 per cent against a 17.4 per cent average across everything.
Key points
- Property accounts for 237,977 of the 1,266,270 filings read so far.
- Buying and selling of own real estate runs at 29.3 per cent in deficit.
- Letting and operating property runs at 23.9 per cent.
- Residents property management, which barely trades, runs at just 4.6 per cent.
The scale of it
Britain files a great many property companies. Not developers in the main, but the structures that hold, let and trade buildings: a single flat can sit inside its own limited company, and a portfolio can be split across dozens.
The breakdown
| Classification | Accounts | In deficit |
|---|---|---|
| Other letting and operating of own or leased real estate | 75,825 | 23.9% |
| Buying and selling of own real estate | 62,527 | 29.3% |
| Residents property management | 34,199 | 4.6% |
| Development of building projects | 27,743 | 22.1% |
| Construction of domestic buildings | 15,050 | 17.9% |
| Management of real estate on a fee or contract basis | 13,616 | 12.8% |
| Real estate agencies | 6,879 | 18.9% |
| Renting and operating of Housing Association real estate | 1,708 | 15.9% |
| Activities of real estate investment trusts | 430 | 18.8% |
Two very different things in one industry
The spread inside property is wider than the spread between most industries. Companies that buy and sell real estate run at 29.3 per cent in deficit. Residents property management, which collects service charges and does little else, runs at 4.6 per cent, one of the lowest rates on the whole register.
The difference is debt. Trading and developing property is done with borrowed money, and borrowed money sits on the balance sheet as a liability until the building is sold. A management company holds neither.
What this does and does not mean
A deficit here means the accounts reported liabilities larger than assets at the balance sheet date. It is not insolvency. Companies funded by a parent or by director loans routinely report negative net assets while paying everything they owe, which is why this reports groups rather than naming companies.
Companies House does not verify the information filed with it. Everything here is what companies reported about themselves.
What happens next
Property is large enough that its rate barely moves week to week, which makes it a useful baseline. If the national figure shifts and property does not, the movement is coming from somewhere else.
How this was produced. Companies House publishes the accounts registered with it as open data each working day. Cap News downloads that file, reads the tagged figures out of each filing and joins them to the company register. Nothing here is hand picked. The method sets out what is counted and what is not.