Best rental returns are outside Southern England says agency

Annual rental growth strengthened for the third month running, with average rents up 7.9 per cent across Britain on the same time last year. The data comes from lettings agency Hamptons.

Rental growth was led by Scotland where rents on newly let homes, which are exempt from the price freeze introduced in September, rose by 12.3 per cent over the last year.  This rate is faster than any other region in Great Britain or at any time since the Hamptons Lettings Index was launched in 2012.

In the UK capital, the average Outer London rent rose 8.9 per cent, passing the £2,000 pcm mark for the first time.  Meanwhile the annual pace of Inner London rental growth softened to 20.4 per cent.  

Here, the falling pace of growth reflects rents having fully recovered back to where they were before the pandemic, with any further rises pushing rents to record highs.        

The agency says that landlords have this year increasingly been buying in places towards the top of the yield league table.  

So far this year 56 per cent of new investor purchases have been in places with average yields of six per cent and above, a figure which has risen from 40 per cent a decade ago. Meanwhile 85 per cent of homes sold by investors this year were generating a yield of below six per cent.

Hartlepool offered new investors the highest average gross yield (9.9 per cent) in England and Wales for the second year running. 

All the top 10 yielding locations were based in Northern England or Wales, with North East Lincolnshire (8.2 per cent) the highest yielding location across the South and Midlands at number 17. 

Portsmouth is the highest ranked local authority anywhere in the South of the country, coming in at number 91 with average gross yields of 6.4 per cent. 

Meanwhile Bexley is the highest yielding London borough, but with an average gross yield 5.9 per cent the area sits in 139^th place across the country.