Residential block management market, trends and drivers in UK for 2025

Table of Contents

Introduction

Based on most recent data in May 2025 for the 2024 period there were 28.8 million residential properties (dwellings) in the UK with 3.8 million or almost 15% of total in London. 

Out of 4.8 million leasehold properties in the UK 30% or 1.4 million are in London showing the high concentration in this asset type class in the capital due to the need of smaller space for smaller households in more densely populated areas to satisfy the demand of predominantly young professionals who dominate this asset class. 

For a detailed look on block management, have a look at our research on Block Management Company Statistics in the UK for 2025 that was conducted from the views of more than 7,512 residents.

Index

• Residential Block Management market size in the UK in 2025
• Self Managing Residential Blocks in London
• Leasehold properties (dwellings) in London and the UK
• Leasehold and freeholds new build completions in the UK (2015-2024)
• Leasehold and freeholds new build completions in London (2015-2024)
• Leasehold properties additions (2015 – 2024)
• Property age in London

What is the market size, growth and trends for the residential block management market in London and the UK in 2025?

The core residential block management market in 2025 is estimated at £3 billion for the UK and is growing approximately at a 10% CAGR annually. 

London, despite only having a third of all UK’s leasehold properties, accounts for nearly 50% or £1.5 billion of the market mainly driven by high concentration of leasehold properties in Central London where prices charged by managing agents are considerably higher. 

London’s market however is growing slowly at an approximately 3% CAGR rate due to slow housebuilding and the low number of new homes overall delivered. 

Residential block management revenue typically includes an annual fee per unit and then various administrative fees arising from project management, attending meetings, organising section 20 or major works, handling insurance claims, providing support in court cases, and a number of other activities carried out as part of looking after a building and its needs. 

While generally block management refers to both residential and commercial our focus in this report is on the residential block management only. 

How many blocks are self managed in London in 2025?

Out of 3.8 million residential properties in London, almost 1 in 2 or 50% are found in the top 10 boroughs. Croydon, being the largest borough in terms of population, accounts fo c.5% of the entire London’s housing stock.

A self managing block is defined as a block that is managed by the residents living in the block. In essence no managing agent is looking after the block and responsibility for compliance and day-to-day management resides with the block owners. 

Calculating how many blocks are self managed in London is very important as the trend is getting smaller on the back of regulation complexity and the significant new rules that came into play after Grenfell necessitating an overthink on fire and safety monitoring and compliance. 

Extrapolating from a sample of 127 blocks across 29 London Boroughs (which account for 86% of London’s housing stock) with a statistical significance of more than 90% we estimate that almost 25%  or 1 in 4 blocks in London are self managed in 2025. While that may seem a lot it should be put in perspective that the majority of residential buildings in London (43% of total) are buildings between 2-5 storeys vs only 12% with those that have 6 storeys and above. 

We expect this number to drop to less than 10% by 2030 as complexity of running a building from insurance revaluation to the legality of section 20 and the increasing regulatory compliance is putting strain to residents that are gradually unable to cope not only due to lack of the necessary expertise but also due to the lack of time to devote in managing a block. 

How many leasehold and freehold new build completions in the UK (2015 – 2024)? 

On average over the last decade there were approximately 49,000 new built leasehold properties completed every year and 157,000 completed freeholds in England. Leaseholds account only for 25% of total completions as outside London the most common building property type would be a freehold house rather than a leasehold property which is typically a flat.

If the completions were to track the government’s target of building 300,000 new homes every year then the total leasehold completions would exceed 75,000 per year, an increase of 53% compared to current levels. 

How many leasehold and freehold new build completions in London (2015 – 2024)? 

On average over the last decade there were approximately 24,000 new built leasehold properties completed every year and 7,000 completed freeholds in London. Leaseholds account for 77% of total completions as the demand in London is for leasehold flats in high rises to help not only from an ecological perspective but also due to the natural land density since most of the housebuilding takes place in inner London. 

If the completions were to track the government’s target of building 65,000 new homes every year then the total leasehold completions would exceed 48,500 per year, an increase of 100% compared to current levels.

How many new leasehold properties have been added (2015 – 2024)?

In England, from a total of 4.8 million leasehold properties only 0.5 million have been added over the last decade. The reason for building only 10% of the current stock in last decade is a combination of factors including but not limited to strict planning rules and long approvals of planning applications, the external shocks that were observed in the market which made developers aim for lower completions (eg. Brexit, Covid, etc.) as well as gradually lower interest from international buyers compared to before, even though this type of market focuses majority in new-built flats rather than houses. 

In London, from a total of 1.4 million leasehold properties close to 250 thousand or 18% have been added over the last 10 years. The reason for slow housebuilding is similar to above and is even more acute for London where building has to factor difficult logistics in getting building materials in highly congested areas. Moreover, as noted below, almost 20% of London’s new build units are delivered via reconfiguration of existing stock by changing its use. 

How old are London’s homes? 

London’s housing stock is predominantly Victorian with 1 in 3 properties being built before 1920. This is one of the reasons why housebuilding in London is slow. While a number of these properties are being reconfigured and split in multiple units, the renovation process takes considerably longer when an existing place is configured for a different use rather than erecting a new construction from scratch. 

Less than 20% of current stock has been built in the last 30 years and if housebuilding is not scaled then over time older stock will be dominating London’s housing. 

Methodology of producing the calculations 

• A number of statistical analysis have been used in producing the results discussed above. These types of analysis included but are not limited to the following:
  • Descriptive analysis
  • Inferential analysis
  • Exploratory data analysis (EDA)
  • Causal analysis and 
  • Bayesian analysis.
• A number of statistical tools were used such as regression to understand core relationships and time series/cluster analysis in presenting the data in a succinct format. 
• More than 25 distinct datasets have been used with a number of those combined to create new datasets (see the various sources used below).
• Limitations: like with every research a number of limitations exist mainly because the original dataset upon which we used as source data have a number of extrapolations even though they were prepared with a statistical significance of 95%. 
• Another significant limitation was the calculation of the new net dwelling stock added in London and England every year split between leasehold and freeholds which is not provided by any government data source. This has been extrapolated using a detailed methodology including initial data from GLA (london datastore), overlaid with past trends from GLA’s Planning Datahub and London Datastore with data from 2015-2024 and with an additional layer of adjustments to factor the shift towards building in Zones 1-3 vs the outer boroughs. 
• Where we talk about UK in many cases we have extrapolated from England data where accuracy is higher and the data has been validated

Sources