ACF Post Query with relationship showing 1 despite despite being 0

• ForbiddenChunk

• August 5, 2024 at 9:00 am

I have created a custom post type with a relationship connected to another custom post type.

Inside a query I have a count for the relationship field to show the total number of posts that have been selected. I thought at first it was working fine until I remove a post from the relationship and it still shows 1 instead of 0

$posts = new WP_Query( 
    array(
        'post_type'     => 'group-clients',
        'post_status'   => 'publish',
        'orderby'       => '',
        'order'         => 'asc'
    ) 
);
$posts = $posts->get_posts();
if ($posts) {
    foreach( $posts as $post ) { ?>    
        <div class="p-4">
            <?php the_title() ?>
        </div>
        <div class="p-4">
            <?php 
                $properties = count( (array) get_field('properties') ); 
                if($properties) {
                    echo $properties;
                } else {
                    echo '0';
                }
            ?>
        </div>                
    <?php
    }
}
wp_reset_postdata();

Can anyone work out why?