Agents in Nottingham are working harder than almost anyone else in the UK, according to new data that ranks the country’s busiest letting agencies. The analysis found that letting agents in the Midlands city are handling more than twice the national average of available rental properties, with each agency managing an average of 31.4 listings.
Top performers in the rental market
The research, conducted by Propoly, examined rental listings and active letting agencies across 21 major cities during July 2026. It established a national average of 13.1 available properties per agency, but Nottingham far outstripped that figure. The city’s 98 agencies are marketing a total of 3,078 rental properties, creating a distinct workload that requires high-volume management.
Nottingham sits at the top of the list, followed closely by Newcastle, which recorded 23.5 listings per agency. Aberdeen (18.2) and Birmingham (17.2) round out the top four, while Leeds (16.5) and Plymouth (15.6) also maintained activity levels above the national average.
Leicester, Portsmouth, and Sheffield all recorded similar figures of around 15 listings per agency, with Bournemouth trailing closely behind at 15.3. These cities collectively demonstrate a trend of high rental stock density, where agents must manage a large volume of active properties simultaneously.
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London and the north of England lag behind
Despite possessing the largest rental market in the country, London ranked below the national average. With 33,473 available properties spread across an estimated 2,744 agencies, the capital averages 12.2 listings per agent. Cardiff recorded the same average, suggesting a saturated market where supply is high but spread thin across a vast number of operations.
Manchester also fell below the overall average at 10 listings per agency. Further north, Glasgow recorded the lowest level of activity in the study with just 8.0 listings per agency, while Newport saw the fewest at 6.8. This disparity highlights the uneven distribution of rental stock across the UK.
Sim Sekhon, group CEO at Propoly, noted the variation in operational challenges. “The volume of rental stock that letting agents are managing varies dramatically across the country and that creates very different operational challenges from one market to the next,” he said. “For agencies handling a high number of available properties, efficiency becomes increasingly important.”
He added that as workloads grow, having the right systems and processes in place can make a significant difference to how quickly properties are marketed and enquiries are managed. “What these figures highlight is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to running a successful lettings business,” Sekhon concluded.
