Key Property Data Figures at a Glance

Metric	Value	Insight
Total Registered Companies	2,189,957	Spread across 12 property categories
Total Director–Address Links	11,381,634	Strong residential bias
Top Company Category	Offices (Inc Computer Centres) – 625,455 (28.6%)	Formal business hubs
Top Director Category	3-Bed Homes – 3,562,096 (31.3%)	Residential decision-making base
Industrial/Workshop Share	183,486 (8.4%)	Operational sites beyond city centres
Dataset Variables	100+	Includes named occupants, property size, ownership, and more

Understanding the Corporate Landscape Through Property Data

The physical footprint of a business reveals patterns that financial statements alone can’t capture. By linking property intelligence with corporate registration and director correspondence data, we gain a richer view of how and where UK businesses operate via Doorda Property Data.

This analysis focuses on four key variables — property category, company registration count, director correspondence count, and address type — drawn from a wider dataset of more than 100 available attributes, including named commercial occupants, property size, and ownership details. Together, these variables expose the structural anatomy of the UK’s corporate geography.

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1. Offices Lead, But Residential Addresses Matter More Than Expected

The data shows over 2.18 million companies registered across the UK, with offices (including computer centres) accounting for ~625,000 registrations (28.6%).
However, residential properties form an equally significant pillar of corporate presence:

• 3-bed homes: ~577,000 (26.4%)
• 4-bed homes: ~313,000 (14.3%)
• 2-bed homes: ~189,000 (8.7%)

This pattern challenges conventional assumptions that businesses cluster exclusively in commercial zones. It points to a dispersed, home-based entrepreneurial economy — one built around SMEs, remote work, and digital-first operations.

2. Directors Are Even More Residentially Anchored

A deeper layer of insight comes from the 11.38 million director–address links identified in the dataset. Here, the residential weighting becomes unmistakable:

• 3-bed properties: ~3.56M (31.3%)
• 4-bed properties: ~2.38M (20.9%)
• Offices: ~1.67M (14.6%)

While companies maintain formal registrations at office premises, directors overwhelmingly anchor their correspondence to residential addresses. For corporate data users, this distinction highlights two layers of business geography — one legal, one human — that must be analysed together to understand ownership networks, control patterns, and real operational presence.

3. Industrial and Retail Categories Reflect Real Economic Activity

Beyond offices and homes, the industrial and retail categories illustrate where tangible operations occur. Factories, workshops, and warehouses (including bakeries and dairies) account for ~183,000 company registrations (8.4%), with stores and restaurants forming a meaningful long tail.

These properties represent production and trade locations, not just corporate addresses — providing key signals for analysts tracking supply chains, logistics demand, and small-scale manufacturing clusters.

4. Combining Variables Unlocks Analytical Depth

While this analysis draws on just four variables, the full dataset contains more than 100 attributes per property. Integrating additional dimensions — such as named commercial occupants, property floor area, and owner details — enables far deeper exploration:

• Identify emerging business clusters based on co-located companies and property attributes
• Pinpoint high-value ownership networks linked across regions
• Map relationships between company scale, property type, and occupancy pattern

By enriching company and director-level data with these fields, organisations can move from descriptive mapping to predictive corporate geography.

5. From Static Listings to Predictive Location Intelligence

Viewed together, these datasets reveal the dual nature of business presence in the UK:

• Companies anchor their identity to office and mixed-use commercial buildings.
• Directors — the people behind those entities — operate largely from residential settings.

This alignment between the corporate layer and the human layer offers a new form of location intelligence. By combining property data with corporate structures, analysts can model:

• Emerging SME ecosystems across suburbs and commuter towns
• Early indicators of business growth through clustering of directors and entities
• Virtual office concentrations or potential anomalies in company formation patterns

6. The Broader Opportunity

For enterprises and analysts consuming property data, the opportunity extends well beyond basic company counts. When merged with other available attributes — size, value, occupant, and ownership — this data provides actionable intelligence for:

• Real estate investment — assessing commercial viability and tenant resilience
• Risk assessment and due diligence — identifying shell networks or virtual office hubs
• Market expansion and targeting — understanding where business activity actually occurs

By transforming registration and correspondence data into spatially-aware insights, businesses can detect growth areas, assess risk exposure, and allocate resources with unprecedented precision.

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Conclusion

The revelation that over 2 million UK properties host registered companies and more than 11 million director–address links exist reframes how we understand the country’s economic landscape. The analysis underscores that corporate activity is not confined to office towers — it’s distributed across homes, workshops, and mixed-use premises throughout the UK.

For organisations consuming property data, the message is clear:
property data is business data. When combined with the 100+ attributes available — from named occupants to ownership and spatial metrics — it becomes a powerful foundation for risk insight, market discovery, and strategic planning.