England Empty Homes Statistics: Regional Data & Trends

England has 309,889 long-term empty homes. That is 1 in every 83 homes on the council tax list, a long-term vacancy rate of 1.20%. It is 37,809 more than a year earlier, up 13.9%. The North East has the highest share of homes standing empty, at 1.42%, while London has the largest number, at 47,864.

Every English council is in the first table, grouped by region, with its count, its long-term vacancy rate and its average house price. Find yours, see how it compares with its neighbours, and check in the tables that follow whether this year’s rise is new or part of a longer run.

Article updated: September 2026

England Empty Homes by Local Authority

Read the long-term vacancy rate before the raw count. A big city tends to have more empty homes than a small district because it has more homes. The rate shows how much of the local stock is sitting idle, and the “1 in X” column says the same thing in plainer terms.

On that measure the Isles of Scilly tops the list, with 39 of its 1,168 homes empty, a rate of 3.34%. Torbay follows at 2.44%, then North East Lincolnshire at 2.33% and Westmorland and Furness at 2.30%. Kensington and Chelsea and Middlesbrough sit level at 2.28%. Twelve authorities are at 2% or above. Of the 296 councils, 130 have a higher rate than England before rounding; Mid Sussex is one of them, though both display as 1.20% after rounding. Havant has the lowest rate in England at 0.38%, with Tandridge at 0.42% and South Gloucestershire at 0.49%.

By count, Birmingham has more long-term empty homes than anywhere else, 7,060, though its rate of 1.51% is a long way behind the leaders. North Yorkshire has 4,664, Liverpool 4,551, Durham 4,182 and Leeds 3,932, and Leeds sits below the England rate at 1.04%. Empty houses and flats are counted together here: every figure covers all dwellings on the council tax list, whatever their type.

The price column is the UK House Price Index average for December 2025, all property types. The Isles of Scilly records too few sales for a published price, so its cell shows a dash.

London

North East

North West

Yorkshire and The Humber

East Midlands

West Midlands

East of England

South East

South West

Where empty homes rose and fell in the last year

Every region of England recorded more long-term empty homes in 2025 than in 2024, and so did 229 of the 296 councils.

London had the biggest rise by a distance, up 8,985 or 23.1% to 47,864, which took its long-term vacancy rate from 1.02% to 1.24%. The North East had the smallest rise, up 1,098 or 6.4%, and keeps the highest regional rate at 1.42%. The South East has the lowest rate at 1.03%, even after a rise of 16.9%. Six regions are above the England rate of 1.20%: the North East, Yorkshire and The Humber, the North West, the West Midlands, London and the East Midlands.

At council level, Birmingham added the most, up 1,654 to 7,060. Barnet added 1,184 and Westminster 1,057. Kirklees, Liverpool and North Yorkshire each added more than 900. Of the 67 councils that recorded fewer, Kingston upon Thames almost halved its count, from 1,945 to 1,029.

Historical empty homes data for England

The series starts in 2013 with 232,600 long-term empty homes, 1.00% of the homes on the council tax list. It fell for three years to a low of 215,139 in 2016, then climbed steadily to 237,594 in 2019 before jumping to 278,470 in 2020. That 2020 jump partly reversed the next year, when the count dropped to 246,644, and it has risen every year since. The 2025 figure of 309,889 is the highest in the series, and the long-term vacancy rate of 1.20% is above the previous high of 1.12% in 2020.

The council tax list grew by around 2.5 million dwellings over the same twelve years, roughly 11%, while the long-term empty count grew by 33%. The estimated value column shows what those homes would be worth at the average price of the day, £41.4 billion in 2013 and £89.8 billion in 2025. For scale, 309,889 homes would house more than 700,000 people at the average UK household size of 2.35 published by the Office for National Statistics, if every one of them were fit to live in.

How long-term empty homes in England have changed each year since 2013.

What counts as a long-term empty home

The government’s definition is short. An empty home is a dwelling that is unoccupied and substantially unfurnished. A long-term empty home has been empty for more than six months on the day the council takes its count, which in 2025 was 6 October. A furnished home that is nobody’s main residence is a second home and is counted separately. There were 267,894 of them in 2025, and 170,299 were charged the second homes premium.

That six-month cut-off matters, because far more homes are empty on any given day. On 6 October 2025, 754,264 dwellings in England were empty for any length of time. Of those, 212,004 were exempt from council tax, including around 124,000 left empty after a death. The other 542,260 were liable for council tax, and 309,889 of them had been empty for more than six months. That is the long-term count, and it does not include any of the exempt homes.

Some published totals are lower than 309,889 because they use a narrower measure from the same release. It leaves out 6,683 homes eligible for the major-repairs council tax discount (class D) and 21 homes empty only because of the floods between October 2023 and January 2024, which brings it down to 303,185. Every year in the historical table uses the broader six-month count, so the series is like for like.

Councils can also charge extra council tax on a long-term empty home, and the same statistics count those too. In 2025, 152,928 homes were charged the empty homes premium, up 27.9% from 119,606 in 2024, and 291 of the 296 councils charged it. Councils report those homes by how long they have stood empty: 58,631 for one to two years, 68,673 for two to five, 17,179 for five to ten, and 8,445 for ten years or more. Some councils could not separate their one-to-two-year homes from the two-to-five, and reported them all in the longer band, so the first two bands are not exact. Under the government’s council tax guidance, a council can charge extra council tax once a home has been empty for at least a year. At ten years or more the bill can be up to four times the normal amount, with exceptions the same page sets out.

Where the figures come from

The empty-home counts and dwelling totals are the Council Taxbase 2025 in England statistics from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The council tax list is the Valuation Office Agency’s snapshot of 10 September 2025, and each council counted its empty homes on 6 October 2025. The release was first published on 6 November 2025 and revised on 21 January 2026 after corrections from 22 authorities, and the figures here are the revised ones.

Earlier years come from each year’s release in the Council Taxbase Statistics collection, always using the same measure, dwellings empty for more than six months on the October count date. The 2024 row uses the revised 2024 workbook published in March 2025, so the year-on-year change is measured against 272,080 and not the original 272,257.

House prices are the UK House Price Index average for all property types for December of each year. The estimated value column multiplies the empty-home count by that December average. It is an estimate, not a valuation. It applies England’s average price to every empty home, with no allowance for where each one is, what type of property it is or what condition it is in. The index is revised as late-registered sales arrive, so the most recent months move slightly after publication. The Isles of Scilly is left out of the index for its low sales volumes. Both points are on the About the UK House Price Index page.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2020. This data is licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Bringing empty homes back into use

A home that has been empty for years does not sit still. Roofs leak, pipes freeze and gardens grow into the neighbours’. A council can respond with the premium, with an empty property officer, and in some areas with grants or loans towards repairs.

Those schemes differ from council to council. The London empty homes grants, West Midlands empty homes grants, East Midlands empty homes grants and North West empty home grants pages list what each council in those regions offers. Moving someone in for a fortnight does not clear the premium. Under the government guidance for councils, a home has to be occupied, or substantially furnished, for at least six weeks in a row. Only then does the empty period that the premium is based on go back to zero. The council tax exemption rules explain which empty homes pay nothing in the meantime.

An empty home is not a free house, and the count is not a list of homes for sale. It records homes liable for council tax that had been unoccupied and substantially unfurnished for more than six months. It says nothing about whether the owner wants to sell, what it would cost, what state it is in or how it might change hands. Some are sold through auctions, estate agents and the sourcing services that list buy to let property for sale or below market value properties. In my experience the hard part of a UK investment property that has stood empty for years is the work rather than the purchase. Trades are hard to find, material costs rise, and both hit the numbers.

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