There were 624,751 properties advertised to rent across the UK's major portals in September 2026, spread across 218 towns and cities. That figure counts each property once, after removing the duplicates created when the same home is listed on several portals at the same time. London holds 58,009 of them — 9.3% of the national total.
No official body publishes this number. The Office for National Statistics measures what renters pay, not how much is on the market, so the only way to answer the question is to count the listings directly.
How many rental properties are available in the UK right now?
624,751, as of September 2026. That is the number of distinct properties being advertised to rent across Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation and Leaders, measured across the 218 UK towns and cities we track.
Two things to understand about that figure before quoting it:
- It counts advertised properties — homes actively looking for a tenant. It is not the size of the private rented sector, which is far larger and mostly occupied.
- It counts each property once. A flat listed simultaneously on Rightmove, PrimeLocation and OnTheMarket is one property, not three.
That second point is where most published counts go wrong.
Why adding up the portals gives you the wrong number
Because the same property is usually on several of them at once. Letting agents syndicate a single instruction to multiple portals as a matter of routine, so portal listing counts overlap heavily rather than stacking.
Add Rightmove's count to Zoopla's and you have not measured the market — you have counted a large share of the same homes twice. The overlap is not marginal, and it is not evenly distributed either: agent-listed stock appears nearly everywhere, while some categories appear in exactly one place.
The listings that genuinely exist in only one location are the ones worth knowing about:
- OpenRent free-tier listings. Landlords advertising on OpenRent's free tier appear on OpenRent and nowhere else. Their paid tier syndicates outward, but the free one does not.
- SpareRoom rooms and flatshares. No other major portal carries this inventory at all.
- Scottish solicitor-agent stock. Listings routed through Citylets or the solicitor property centres often reach the UK-wide portals late, or never.
Getting to a single honest number means matching listings across portals on address, price and bedroom count, then discarding the repeats. That deduplication is the difference between 624,751 and a much larger, much less meaningful figure.
Where is the UK's rental stock concentrated?
Heavily in a small number of large cities. The ten largest markets hold 185,210 advertised properties between them — 29.6% of everything available nationally. The top twenty hold 42.1%.
| City | Advertised properties | Median advertised rent |
|---|---|---|
| London | 58,009 | £2,400 |
| Manchester | 21,999 | £1,350 |
| Birmingham | 20,554 | £1,150 |
| Leeds | 15,197 | £1,075 |
| Bristol | 13,290 | £1,500 |
| Nottingham | 12,040 | £975 |
| Glasgow | 12,027 | £1,195 |
| Edinburgh | 11,680 | £1,500 |
| Liverpool | 10,398 | £950 |
| Sheffield | 10,016 | £935 |
The distribution below the top ten falls away sharply. The median town or city in our index carries about 1,750 advertised properties, and 54 of the 218 carry fewer than 1,000. In a market that size, a week of thin supply is the difference between a real choice and no choice at all.
Rent follows the same geography. Westminster is the most expensive area we track, at a £3,857 median, followed by Camden at £3,200 and Fulham at £3,100. At the other end, Hartlepool sits at £625, Grimsby at £650 and Darlington at £675. We ranked the full list in our guide to the cheapest UK cities to rent.
Does every city have the same portal coverage?
No, and this is the part renters most often get wrong. All six portals operate in 59 of the 218 places we track — and those 59 hold 45.6% of national stock. In 45 towns and cities, four or fewer of the six carry any listings at all.
The practical consequence: the portal that serves you well in Manchester may be close to empty in a smaller market, where one or two portals hold everything. Searching a single site is a different-sized mistake depending on where you are looking. We covered which portal carries what in our guide to the best alternatives to Rightmove.
How does this compare with official rent figures?
It measures a different thing, and the two numbers should not be read as competing. The median advertised rent across our index is £1,050 a month. The ONS puts average UK private rent at £1,381 in April 2026, up 3.5% over twelve months, according to its private rent and house prices bulletin.
Both are correct. They differ because:
- ONS measures rents being paid, across all private tenancies including long-running ones. We measure asking rents on properties currently advertised — a smaller, newer, more expensive-at-the-margin slice.
- ONS reports a mean; we report a median. A mean is pulled upward by the top of the market, and the UK rental market has a very long tail at the top.
- The geographic bases differ. Our index weights the towns and cities we cover, not the whole country including rural stock.
Where the two agree is direction. ONS has London at £2,290 and Scotland at £1,019; our advertised medians put London at £2,400 and Glasgow at £1,195. Different measures, same shape of market.
What does this mean if you are looking for a place?
That the number of properties is rarely your problem — the number you see in time is. There are over half a million advertised homes in the UK, and a renter checking one portal in one city is looking at a small fraction of them, hours after the fastest applicants have already enquired.
Three things follow from the data above:
- Coverage matters more in smaller markets. In a city where four portals carry stock, missing one is missing a quarter of the market.
- Duplicates cost you attention, not opportunity. Seeing the same flat three times is not three chances; it is one chance and two wasted checks.
- Timing beats volume. Stock turns over continuously. What is listed today is largely not what was listed last week.
Dwellio watches all six portals continuously and sends one deduplicated alert when something matching your criteria appears, rather than leaving you to run six searches and filter the repeats yourself. Signing up is free and takes no card. The full alerting tier is £9.99 a month with a 7-day free trial, and you can see the plans here.
Methodology
The figures on this page come from Dwellio's own listings index, rebuilt continuously from six portals — Rightmove, OnTheMarket, OpenRent, SpareRoom, PrimeLocation and Leaders — across 218 UK towns and cities. Zoopla is not scraped directly; PrimeLocation shares Zoopla's parent company and agent backend, so its rental stock mirrors Zoopla's closely.
Counts are of distinct advertised properties after cross-portal deduplication, which matches on normalised address, price within a tolerance, and bedroom count. Rents are medians of advertised asking rents, not rents achieved. The snapshot is September 2026 and is republished on the UK rental index as it updates.
Two honest limitations. Deduplication is very good but not perfect, so the true count of distinct homes is marginally below our figure. And a property advertised is not a property available — some listings remain up briefly after being let.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many rental properties are available in the UK?
There were 624,751 properties advertised to rent across the UK's major portals in September 2026, counted across 218 towns and cities after removing cross-portal duplicates. No official body publishes this figure — the Office for National Statistics measures what renters pay rather than how many homes are on the market.
How many rental properties are listed on Rightmove and Zoopla combined?
Adding the two together does not give a meaningful number, because the same properties appear on both. Letting agents routinely syndicate one instruction to several portals at once, so portal counts overlap rather than stack. A combined figure double-counts a large share of the market, which is why any credible total has to match listings across portals and discard the repeats first.
Is the UK running out of rental properties?
Not in absolute terms — over half a million homes are advertised at any given time. The pressure renters experience comes from how fast that stock turns over and how it is distributed: the ten largest cities hold 29.6% of everything available, and 54 of the 218 places we track carry fewer than 1,000 advertised properties each.
Which UK city has the most rental properties?
London, with 58,009 advertised properties in September 2026 — 9.3% of the UK total. Manchester is second with 21,999 and Birmingham third with 20,554. Rent tracks the same geography, with a £2,400 median in London against £1,150 in Birmingham.
Why is the average rent here lower than the ONS figure?
Because the two measure different things. The ONS reports the mean rent being paid across all private tenancies, including long-running ones, and puts UK average rent at £1,381 in April 2026. We report the median asking rent on properties currently advertised. Advertised rents are a newer, smaller slice of the market, and a median is not pulled upward by the top end the way a mean is.
The Bottom Line
Over 600,000 UK homes are advertised to rent at any given moment, and no official source counts them. The number is large enough that scarcity is not really the renter's problem — visibility is. Stock is concentrated in a handful of big cities, portal coverage varies sharply by location, and the same property routinely appears in several places at once, which makes the market look bigger than it is while making individual listings easier to miss.
Search the portals that actually carry stock where you are looking, count each property once, and get to the listing before the queue forms.