London, United Kingdom
England's register will tell anyone who owns a London title for £7 and publishes every sale price with its address for free under the Open Government Licence; the one thing it will not do is hand over the names in bulk without an account and its own licence.
8 buildings · 7 with an owner established · 27 sources · 2 tier B · 6 tier A · prepared 2026-10-04
Can you find out who owns it?
Ownership in England and Wales sits in HM Land Registry's register, which is public: anyone may buy a copy of the register for any registered title for £7 online (the title plan is another £7; official copies by post are £11 each), and the register names the registered proprietor, the price paid where it was stated in the deed, charges and restrictions. Prices are also published separately: Price Paid Data lists every registered sale since 1995 with its full address, price and date, free under the Open Government Licence v3.0 with commercial reuse allowed. Who owns the city in bulk is answered only for companies: HM Land Registry's two datasets of UK and overseas companies that own property list every title whose registered owner is not a private individual, free with an account on its Use land and property data service under HM Land Registry's own licence rather than the OGL; titles held by private individuals are excluded from both files for data-protection and fraud-prevention reasons, so for them the answer stays £7 a title. Overseas companies holding UK land must also declare their beneficial owners on Companies House's free Register of Overseas Entities. London here means Greater London: the City of London Corporation and the 32 boroughs are distinct landowners and each marquee building below says which it is in.
Is ownership public?Public, but one paid search at a time
Cost of one title search£7 for an online copy of the title register and £7 for the title plan; £11 each for official copies by post (GOV.UK, 'Search the register')
Bulk ownership dataHM Land Registry 'UK companies that own property in England and Wales' (formerly CCOD) and 'Overseas companies that own property in England and Wales' (formerly OCOD): free with an account on use-land-property-data.service.gov.uk under HMLR's own data licence (not OGL); private individuals excluded. Companies House Register of Overseas Entities names beneficial owners of overseas companies holding UK land.
Sale pricesEvery sale, with its address
Sites that forbid taking their data
- rightmove.co.uk — “You must not ... use bots, crawlers, scrapers or other automated programs or means to access or collect data or other content from or otherwise interact with the Platform”
- zoopla.co.uk — “Terms could not be opened to quote a clause: HTTP 403 with a Cloudflare 'Just a moment...' body to a scripted fetch. Treated as prohibited and not used; HM Land Registry's own price data replaces it.”
1
The marquee buildings
The towers that set the tone of the core, and who holds them. A price is the price a document states, on the date it states — not an estimate of what the building is worth now.
| Building | Use | Owner | Owner type | Last price paid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Shard 32 London Bridge Street, SE1 9SG — London Borough of Southwark 1,300,000 sq ft GIA (Sellar) · 95 floors |
Mixed use | Qatar Central Bank (State of Qatar) with Sellar Sellar's project page lists the Shard at 1,300,000 sq ft GIA, 95 storeys, completed 2012, with PARTNER 'QCB'. The-shard.com says 'The Shard's future was assured in 2008 when the State of Qatar came on board as a partner', calls Irvine Sellar 'developer and joint owner', and carries the copyright line '© LBQ Ltd 2026'. On Companies House's Register of Overseas Entities, LBQ Four Limited (OE012425, Jersey no. 102363) records one beneficial owner: Qatar Central Bank, Doha, notified 31 July 2015. No page opened states the split between the two, and the ROE entry does not list the titles the entity holds, so the Shard's own title (£7) was not read. |
Sovereign fund | —B |
| Canary Wharf estate (One Canada Square) One Canada Square, Canary Wharf, E14 5AB — London Borough of Tower Hamlets |
Office | Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings plc Brookfield Corporation's 2024 Annual Information Form (filed with the SEC 2025-03-24) states: 'We own interests in and operate some of the most iconic office assets globally, including Manhattan West in New York and Canary Wharf in London.' Companies House lists Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings plc (05043352) at One Canada Square; its PSC register recorded Brookfield Corporation (Ontario 1644037) and the Qatar Investment Authority each at 'more than 25% but not more than 50%' from 6 April 2016 until both ceased on 12 May 2025, since when the company states there is no registrable person or relevant legal entity. The tower's own title was not read. |
Private company | —B |
| The Leadenhall Building 122 Leadenhall Street, EC3V 4AB — City of London approximately 610,000 sq ft of office and retail (CC Land) · 46 floors |
Office | C C Land Holdings Limited (HKEX: 1224) CC Land's investment-properties page: 'The Leadenhall Building, a skyscraper having a height of 225 metres (738 feet) ... consists of 46 floors which are used mainly for office purposes and will be held by the Group as investment property for long-term capital growth. It comprises approximately 610,000 sqf of office and retail space and is fully let with a weighted average unexpired lease term of approximately 8.8 years ... The current annual contract rent of The Leadenhall Building is around GBP41.8 million (31 December 2023: GBP40.6 million) ... The rental yield is approximately 3.6%.' The page does not state the 2017 purchase price, so none is given. |
Public company | —A |
| 20 Fenchurch Street (the 'Walkie Talkie') 20 Fenchurch Street, EC3M 8AF — City of London |
Office | LKK Health Products Group, through Infinitus Property Investment (Hong Kong) Limited 100% interest The buyer's own announcement, dated London 27 July 2017: LKK Health Products Group 'is pleased to announce that on 26 July it has entered into a sale and purchase agreement with Land Securities Group plc and Canary Wharf Group plc, through Infinitus Property Investment (Hong Kong) Limited, its wholly-owned subsidiary, to acquire the 100% interest in the landmark commercial building at 20 Fenchurch Street, London, known as the "Walkie Talkie", for a total consideration of GBP1.2825 billion (approximately HKD12.8 billion).' The page announces the agreement, not completion; the building's own site is a client-rendered shell. |
Family / private | GBP GBP 1.2825 billion 2017-07-26 Total consideration in the sale and purchase agreement of 26 July 2017 with Land Securities Group plc and Canary Wharf Group plc, as announced by the buyer on 27 July 2017. A |
| Covent Garden estate (Covent Garden and Seven Dials portfolio) Covent Garden, WC2 — City of Westminster (Seven Dials reaches into Camden) 1.5 million sq ft (NBIM) |
Mixed use | Shaftesbury Capital PLC (75%) and Norges Bank Investment Management (25%) 75% Shaftesbury Capital / 25% Norges Bank Investment Management Norges Bank Investment Management's press release of 20 March 2025: it 'has acquired a 25 percent interest in a mixed-use property portfolio located in Covent Garden, in a new joint venture with Shaftesbury Capital PLC ... will pay 570 million pounds for its 25 percent ownership interest, valuing the portfolio at 2,659 million pounds.' It continues: 'The seller of the 25 percent interest is Shaftesbury Capital PLC. Shaftesbury will retain the remaining 75 percent interest and will manage the portfolio on behalf of the joint venture. The 1.5 million' sq ft portfolio is retail and leisure around Covent Garden and Seven Dials. Shaftesbury's own site refused automation. |
REIT | GBP £570 million for a 25% interest 2025-03-20 Norges Bank Investment Management's price for 25%, valuing the portfolio at £2,659 million; agreement signed 20 March 2025, completion expected early April 2025. A |
| Regent Street and St James's estate Regent Street, W1 — City of Westminster |
Mixed use | The Crown Estate The Crown Estate's home page: 'Our £16 billion portfolio includes rural land, the seabed and urban centres. This includes one of the largest rural holdings in the country, an estate across Regent Street and St James's in London, and the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland.' Its 2025/26 annual report page adds a net revenue profit of £0.5 billion returned to the Treasury and '£500 million investment in London's West End'. A statutory corporation whose surplus goes to the UK Government, so classed here as an institution rather than a company. The /our-places/london page 404s; no London-only valuation is published on the pages opened. |
Institution | —A |
| Westfield London Ariel Way, W12 7GF — London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham 2.6 million sq ft (URW) |
Retail | Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Commerz Real (joint owners) URW's asset page: Westfield London, '2.6 million square feet, is jointly owned by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and Commerz Real, asset manager of German Commerzbank', with more than 460 stores and over 80 restaurants. The page does not give the percentage split. URW's portfolio index (78 assets) also lists Westfield Stratford City, London (Newham) — 'the most popular retail and leisure destination in the UK, attracting 50 million shoppers annually' — without stating URW's share, so Stratford appears in the commercial table rather than here. |
REIT | —A |
| Harrods 87-135 Brompton Road, SW1X 7XL — Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea |
Retail | Not established a paid title search would answer it Deliberately blank: Companies House documents the operating company, not the title. The PSC register runs Harrods Limited (00030209) → Harrods (UK) Limited (01889348, 75%+) → Harrods Holdings Limited (01848143, 75%+) → QH Participations Limited (06511479, over 50%) and QH Partners Limited (05961740) → Harrods Group (Holding) Limited (05990648, 75%+), all at 85-135 Brompton Road. None of those pages says which company holds the freehold of the store, and the register copy that would (£7) was not bought. The widely reported 2010 sale to Qatar Holding is not asserted because no primary document for it was opened. |
Not established | —A |
2
The core land
The most valuable ground in the city, and what the public record says about it.
London is the only city in this section where the sale prices of whole towers are published for free by the state. HM Land Registry's Price Paid Data carries commercial transfers as 'additional price paid' (category B) records, so the largest cheques of the past two years sit in an OGL file with their addresses — the one thing missing is the buyer's name, which is £7 away per title. The VOA's rating list sizes the commercial stock borough by borough.
Largest price recorded in London since January 2025£793,020,000
HM Land Registry Price Paid Data via the SPARQL endpoint, town LONDON, transactions dated 2025-01-01 onward: 'HOWARD HOTEL, 12 TEMPLE PLACE, WC2R 2PR', City of Westminster, 2025-09-30, category B (additional price paid). Next: 10 Wardour Street W1D 6QF £260,000,000 (2025-10-31); 112 Great Russell Street WC1B 3NQ, Camden, £217,000,000 (2026-01-09); Thames City Phase 2, Nine Elms Lane, Wandsworth, £190,498,163 (2025-02-28). Read 2026-10-04.
Transactions registered in London, calendar 202565,728 sales, £58,921,674,629
Price Paid Data SPARQL count and sum for town = LONDON, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31, both categories. Read 2026-10-04.
Average house price, London, July 2026£550,037 (-3.3% year on year)
UK House Price Index, July 2026 release (18 September 2026), Average-prices file: London E12000007 £550,037; City of London £710,652; Kensington and Chelsea £1,232,640 (-14.1%); Camden £815,159; Southwark £572,478; Tower Hamlets £447,796; England £293,479; UK £272,611.
Rateable value of London's commercial stock, 2025£20,514,293,000 across 316,010 hereditaments
VOA 'Non-domestic rating: stock of properties, 2025', table SOP3 (rateable value in £000s by billing authority): London region total; City of London £2,682,606,000 on 19,140 properties; Westminster £4,750,977,000 on 36,270; Camden £1,553,148,000; Tower Hamlets £1,030,324,000. Table SOP2 puts offices at £9,291,383,000 of London's RV, retail £4,012,528,000, industry £2,221,786,000.
New homes completed in London, 2025-2617,890 (10,860 started)
MHCLG Live Table 253, FY 2025-26 (published 24 September 2026): private enterprise 13,470, housing associations 3,340, local authorities 1,080. Largest boroughs: Brent 1,750, Newham 1,590, Greenwich 1,300, Ealing 1,180, Southwark 980; City of London 600; Westminster 220; Kensington and Chelsea 20.
5
Who builds the houses
New-home building in this market: the volume, and the firms behind it. Ownership of a builder matters as much as its volume — a private-equity platform and a family firm behave differently.
There is no official league table of UK housebuilders, so the ranking is assembled from the listed builders' own reports and MHCLG's tenure split, as the brief anticipated. Two things stand out. London's new supply is not made by the national volume builders: the FTSE housebuilders below completed roughly 48,000 homes between them nationally in their latest years, while all of London completed 17,890. And one in four London completions in 2025-26 was built by a housing association or a council, the highest non-market share in this section outside Amsterdam. The one London specialist, Berkeley, told its shareholders in April 2026 that London is 'building less than 10% of the homes it needs'.
| Name | Type | Homes completed, latest reported year (group, UK) |
|---|---|---|
| Barratt Redrow plc Our sum of the brand completions on the 2025 annual-report page: Barratt Homes 8,008, David Wilson Homes 5,037, Redrow 3,520. Medium-term target '22,000 total home completions per year'. Builds in London through Barratt London. |
Public company | 16,565 (FY to June 2025)A |
| Vistry Group PLC 2025 annual-report page: 'Completions 15,658 (2024: 17,225)', revenue £3,613.7m, 71,501 owned and controlled plots; the group says it 'delivered one in seven of the country's affordable homes'. A partnerships model: most output is pre-sold to housing associations and councils. |
Public company | 15,658 (2025)A |
| Persimmon plc Investor page: '2025 in Numbers: 11,905 New homes sold, £3.75bn Group total revenue, £397.3m Profit before tax'; H1 2026: 5,189 sold. Volume builder with little central-London exposure. |
Public company | 11,905 (2025)A |
| The Berkeley Group Holdings plc Full-year results announcement, 30 April 2026 year-end: 'We delivered 4,203 good green homes within the most under-supplied regions of the UK, with 90% built on' brownfield land. The only London-focused plc; the announcement says London is 'delivering less than 10% of its MHCLG annual' housing need. |
Public company | 4,203 (FY to 30 April 2026)A |
| Housing associations (all, London) MHCLG Live Table 253: housing-association completions across the London boroughs in FY 2025-26, with 340 starts. Greenwich 670, Newham 570, Wandsworth 570. |
Institution | 3,340 completions (2025-26)A |
| Local authorities (all, London) MHCLG Live Table 253: council-built completions in London in FY 2025-26, with 70 starts. Greenwich 250, Westminster 130. Council building is a rounding error nationally (2,660 of 143,250 in England) but 6% of London's output. |
Government | 1,080 completions (2025-26)A |
6
Commercial landlords
The commercial side, counted separately from housing: who holds the office, retail and industrial floor area.
London's biggest commercial landlords are listed REITs, a statutory estate and two foreign-owned platforms, and every one publishes a figure of a different kind — assets under management, floor area, portfolio value, a share of a centre — so the table cannot be ranked on one measure. Where a company's own pages would not state its share of a joint venture (British Land at Broadgate), the asset is counted to the operator's portfolio figure and not credited as owned. The VOA's £20.5bn rateable value for London is the denominator none of them is measured against.
| Name | Type | Portfolio, as each landlord states it |
|---|---|---|
| The British Land Company PLC Campuses page: '£10.3bn assets under management, 94.7% occupancy, £246m annualised accounting rent, 2.7m sq ft development pipeline'; Broadgate is 'an office-led campus in the City of London'. FY2026: IFRS net assets £5,932m. Its share of the Broadgate joint venture is not stated on the pages opened, which is why Broadgate is not a marquee entry. |
REIT | £10.3bn assets under management; 94.7% occupancyA |
| The Crown Estate Home page statement; 2025/26 net revenue profit £0.5 billion to the Treasury and a stated '£500 million investment in London's West End'. London-only value not published on the pages opened. |
Institution | £16 billion portfolio (all UK), incl. Regent Street and St James'sA |
| Derwent London plc Home page: 'Derwent London owns a portfolio of 5.2 million sq ft (480,000 sq m) of commercial real estate, predominantly in central London, valued at £5.0bn'. |
REIT | 5.2 million sq ft, valued at £5.0bnA |
| Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield URW's portfolio index lists both London centres among 78 assets; the Westfield London page states joint ownership with Commerz Real and the Stratford page states 50 million shoppers a year. Neither page states URW's percentage. |
REIT | Westfield London 2.6m sq ft (joint with Commerz Real) + Westfield Stratford CityA |
| Shaftesbury Capital PLC Stated by its partner Norges Bank Investment Management on 20 March 2025; the company's own site blocks automation. Carnaby, Soho and Chinatown holdings are not asserted because no page stating them opened. |
REIT | 75% of the £2,659m Covent Garden portfolioB |
| Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings plc Brookfield's 2024 AIF: 'We own interests in and operate ... Canary Wharf in London'. Companies House PSC history names Brookfield Corporation and the Qatar Investment Authority at 25-50% each until 12 May 2025. Group site unreadable to scripts. |
Private company | the Canary Wharf estate (floor area not stated on any page opened)B |
| Grosvenor Grosvenor's UK page: 'At the heart of our business is Mayfair and Belgravia ... Alongside our London Estate, we manage high-quality offices in major UK regional cities.' The Mayfair and Belgravia page describes 350 years of 'stewardship' and 'actively manage and evolve' but nowhere on the pages opened does Grosvenor say it owns the estate, so it is listed as the estate's stated steward and not credited with any title. |
Family / private | Mayfair and Belgravia (the 'London Estate'); acreage not statedA |
?
Looked for and not found
Claims this page would have made if a source could be opened. They are left out rather than guessed.
- The Shard's exact ownership split. Sellar names its partner only as 'QCB', the-shard.com says the State of Qatar joined 'as a partner' in 2008, and the Register of Overseas Entities names Qatar Central Bank as beneficial owner of LBQ Four Limited; the pack's '95% Qatari Diar / 5% Sellar' appears on none of these pages and is not asserted.
- Who now controls Canary Wharf Group. Companies House shows Brookfield Corporation and the Qatar Investment Authority ceasing as registered controllers on 12 May 2025 and the company stating it has no registrable controller; Brookfield's 2024 AIF (filed March 2025) still says it owns interests in Canary Wharf. Neither tells you what changed in May 2025.
- The freeholder of Harrods. The Companies House chain ends at Harrods Group (Holding) Limited and never names the building.
- British Land's share of Broadgate (commonly reported as a 50:50 joint venture with GIC): no British Land page opened states it, and 'GIC' does not appear on them.
- The Leadenhall Building's 2017 purchase price (reported as £1.15bn): CC Land's page does not state it.
- Taylor Wimpey's 2025 completions: the figure is an animated counter; only '2024: 10,593' and the 14,000 target are in the HTML.
- The HM Land Registry licence text for the CCOD/OCOD files, which sits behind the sign-in that loops for automated clients. The datasets are cited from GOV.UK's guidance at tier B and nothing derived from them is republished.
- A VOA per-hereditament read (which would give each tower's rateable value): the list downloads require accepting the VOA's terms on a click-through, which was not scripted past.
§
Sources
- Get information about property and land: Search the register — GOV.UK / HM Land Registry · openA
- HM Land Registry: UK companies that own property in England and Wales (formerly CCOD) — GOV.UK / HM Land Registry · registrationB
- HM Land Registry: Overseas companies that own property in England and Wales (formerly OCOD) — GOV.UK / HM Land Registry · registrationB
- How to access HM Land Registry Price Paid Data — GOV.UK / HM Land Registry · openA
- Price Paid Data — SPARQL endpoint (landregistry.data.gov.uk/landregistry/query) — HM Land Registry · openA
- UK House Price Index for July 2026 and the Average-prices-2026-07 data file — HM Land Registry / ONS · openA
- Non-domestic rating: stock of properties, 2025 (tables SOP2, SOP3) — Valuation Office Agency · openA
- Live Table 253: housing supply — permanent dwellings started and completed, by tenure and district, 2025-26 — Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · openA
- Register an overseas entity and its beneficial owners — GOV.UK / Companies House · openA
- Terms of use — Rightmove Group Limited · openA
- The Shard — About / Vision — LBQ Ltd (the-shard.com) · openA
- The Shard (project page) and LBQ Four Limited beneficial owners (Register of Overseas Entities, OE012425) — Sellar; Companies House · openA
- Persons with significant control: Harrods Limited (00030209) and its parents 01889348, 01848143, 06511479 — Companies House · openA
- Brookfield Corporation 2024 Annual Information Form (Form 40-F exhibit 99.1, filed 2025-03-24) and Canary Wharf Group Investment Holdings plc PSC register (05043352) — Brookfield Corporation via SEC EDGAR; Companies House · openA
- Major Investment Properties — The Leadenhall Building — C C Land Holdings Limited · openA
- LKK Health Products Group Acquires Landmark Office Building at 20 Fenchurch Street in London for GBP1.2825 Billion (27 July 2017) — Lee Kum Kee Group · openA
- Fund makes new investment in London (press release, 20 March 2025) — Norges Bank Investment Management · openA
- Home page and Annual Report 2025/26 — The Crown Estate · openA
- Portfolio — Westfield London; Westfield Stratford City — Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield · openA
- Annual Report 2025 — Barratt Redrow plc · openA
- Annual Report 2025 — Vistry Group PLC · openA
- Investors — Persimmon plc · openA
- Full year results announcement, year ended 30 April 2026 — The Berkeley Group Holdings plc · openA
- Our Places — Campuses; Annual Report 2026 — The British Land Company PLC · openA
- Home — Derwent London plc · openA
- Property UK; Mayfair and Belgravia — Grosvenor · openA
- Terms of use (unreadable: 403 Cloudflare challenge) — Zoopla · blockedC