Hackney is not a terraced-street borough, whatever the streetscape suggests. On the 2021 census only 13.9% of households here lived in a terraced house. 60.4% lived in a purpose-built block of flats and a further 15.5% in a converted or shared house — the latter more than four times the England rate of 3.5%. Add another 3.4% in other converted buildings and roughly four in five Hackney households are in a flat of one kind or another.
The purpose-built blocks are the bigger half, and they generate a different kind of job from anything in a house. Work in them tends to be communal rather than inside a dwelling: rising mains and lateral mains, landlord’s distribution boards, stair and corridor lighting, emergency lighting that has to be tested and logged, and intake positions shared between dozens of flats.
The other defining fact is tenure. 40.5% of Hackney households rent socially — 20.7% from the council and 19.8% from housing associations — and only 24.6% own their home, the lowest owner-occupation of any area we cover. That matters practically: in a large share of buildings here, the person who can authorise work on a communal circuit is a council or housing-association asset team or a managing agent, not a resident.
In the converted stock the recurring question is not condition so much as ownership. Where does the landlord’s supply stop and the flat’s begin, is the hall and stair lighting fed from the right place, and did anyone certify the split when the house was divided? Those are answered by inspection, not by looking at the building.
Licensing here is new and worth checking carefully. Hackney approved two schemes that came into force in May 2026: selective licensing across 17 of the borough’s 21 wards, covering around three-quarters of privately rented homes, and additional HMO licensing across the remaining four. Which one applies depends on your ward and on the property, and each carries its own conditions, including on electrical safety. Read the conditions attached to your own licence rather than assuming, and note that the national five-yearly EICR duty applies to most private rented homes regardless.
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