The Government's plan for a national rental database has drawn a cautious response from the National Residential Landlords Association. The association welcomed the clearer timetable but warned that a register focused only on landlords, properties and compliance history may not capture the full shape of the private rented sector.
That scope question matters because rental markets do not behave uniformly across the country. A national directory can tell you who owns a property and whether it meets basic standards, but it tells you very little about where renting is concentrated, how local demand is changing, or which postcode districts carry the heaviest reliance on private landlords.
What our data shows
| District | Post town | Region | Homes owned |
|---|---|---|---|
| LS2 | Leeds | Yorkshire and The Humber | 11.1% |
| SR1 | Sunderland | North East | 11.9% |
| S1 | Sheffield | Yorkshire and The Humber | 13.3% |
| BD1 | Bradford | Yorkshire and The Humber | 13.5% |
| LE1 | Leicester | East Midlands | 14.8% |
| L1 | Liverpool | North West | 15.1% |
| HU1 | Hull | Yorkshire and The Humber | 16.1% |
| NE1 | Newcastle upon Tyne | North East | 16.1% |
| M50 | Salford | North West | 16.9% |
| EC1N | London | London | 17.2% |
Postcodes UK has looked at rental tenure by postcode district using HM Land Registry price-paid records, ONS census tenure data and our own address-level database. The finding is striking. The district with the highest share of renting households is LS2, the central Leeds postcode district, where 11.1% of addresses are rented.
That single figure may sound modest, but it is the highest across all postcode districts in our dataset. It tells us that even the most rental-heavy part of the country still has a relatively low concentration of rented homes at postcode district level. Much of the private rented sector is spread thinly across many districts, rather than clustered in a few obvious places.
For a national landlord directory, this creates a practical problem. A register that lists landlords and properties without a strong geographic lens will struggle to show where enforcement resources are most needed. LS2's 11.1% is a lead indicator of an area where renting plays a bigger role than anywhere else, but a national list alone would not highlight that unless local analysis is layered on top.
Why local context matters
The NRLA's warning is really about scope. A database that goes beyond a simple directory could help councils spot concentrations of rented homes, track changes in tenure over time and target inspections more effectively. At Postcodes UK, we work with postcode-level granularity for exactly this reason. A national average hides the variation that a district like LS2 reveals.
If the register remains a national directory of landlords, it will answer basic questions about who owns what. But it will not answer questions such as where renting is growing fastest, which neighbourhoods have the highest turnover, or which local markets are most exposed to rent rises. Those questions require postcode district data, linked to property transactions and census records.
The Government has said the database will support compliance and help tenants understand their rights. Our view is that the data should also be open enough for analysts and local authorities to join it with postcode boundaries. That would allow the kind of analysis we have done for LS2 to be repeated across the country, rather than forcing every council to build its own local picture from scratch.
The data behind this
This article is based on rental tenure analysis from the Postcodes UK database, using HM Land Registry price-paid data and ONS census tenure statistics. The headline figure is the share of renting households by postcode district, with LS2 in Leeds recording 11.1%, the highest among all districts in our dataset.
In response to reporting by The Intermediary. Analysis and figures by Postcodes UK.