Every few months another table lands telling landlords where to buy next. Almost all of them rank on one number. Highest yield. Fastest house-price growth. Cheapest entry. I have never found those tables much use, because the place that wins on one measure is rarely the place where you can actually run a portfolio for the next decade.
So we built our own index and deliberately made it harder to win.
We ranked 30 major investment locations across England, Wales and Scotland on eight weighted measures: gross rental yield, average property price, rental growth, rental market tightness, population growth, employment growth, house-price momentum, and a regeneration and infrastructure delivery score based on confirmed projects rather than press-release numbers.
Newcastle upon Tyne comes first with 79.47 out of 100. Glasgow is second on 73.91, Liverpool third on 73.13, Manchester fourth on 71.85.
The interesting part is not the winner. It is how many cities top an individual table and then finish nowhere near the top overall.
Key findings
- Newcastle ranks first on 79.47, with the strongest rental growth in the study (9.9%) and the tightest rental market (38 median days unlet).
- It wins despite falling employment. Newcastle earned only 2.07 of an available 10 points for jobs. Balance across the other seven measures carried it.
- Glasgow has the best yield at 8.03%, and second place overall.
- Aberdeen has the second-best yield at 7.57%, and ranks 19th.
- Exeter has the fastest population growth at 9.57%, and ranks 26th.
- London scores 10/10 for regeneration and the highest rents in Britain, and ranks 28th.
- Hull is the cheapest market at £133,485 average price, and still finishes fifth.
Explore the index
Switch the measure below and watch the country redraw itself. That shift, from one metric to another, is the whole argument of this piece: there is no single map of where to invest.
Positions are indicative city-centre coordinates on a stylised outline. Greater London is plotted at the City of London.
Newcastle ranks first, and not because it leads everything
Newcastle’s 79.47 comes from several of the highest-weighted measures pointing the same way at once.
Its indicative gross yield is 6.99%, which is strong without being an outlier. Rents grew 9.9% over the year, the fastest of any location we looked at. Its rental market is the tightest in the study, with a median of just 38 days for a listing to let, which tells you stock is being absorbed almost as soon as it appears. Population grew 7.92% over five years. House prices are moving up modestly at 3.10%.
The weakness it won with
Newcastle’s employment picture is genuinely poor. Resident payrolled employment fell by around 0.15% between May 2023 and May 2026. On a 10-point measure it scored 2.07.
I want to draw attention to that rather than bury it, because it is the best evidence the index works. A ranking built to flatter a predetermined winner would not hand first place to a city carrying a near-zero score on one of its eight measures. Newcastle finished top because five other measures were strong enough to absorb the damage.
What this means for investors. A market can be worth buying in while one of its indicators looks wrong. What matters is whether the weakness is structural or cyclical, and whether the rest of the picture is strong enough to carry it. Newcastle’s tenant demand is not in question. Its jobs number is worth watching.
The yield trap
If you rank purely on yield, the top of the table reads Glasgow at 8.03%, Aberdeen at 7.57%, Dundee at 7.01%, then Newcastle at 6.99%.
Now look at where those cities actually finish overall. Glasgow second. Aberdeen 19th. Dundee 17th.
Aberdeen is the clearest cautionary case in the whole dataset. It has the second-highest yield of the 30 locations and one of the cheapest average prices at £134,507. It also has the sharpest house-price fall in the study at -3.50%, and employment down 2.24%, the worst of any city we measured. A high yield on a depreciating asset in a shrinking jobs market is not the same opportunity as a high yield in a growing one, even though a yield table cannot tell them apart.
Glasgow, by contrast, earns its second place. The 8.03% yield sits alongside a comparatively accessible £189,448 average price, a 52-day rental market and 6.17% population growth. The yield is supported rather than isolated.
What this means for investors. Yield is an output, not a strategy. It is a ratio between rent and price, so it rises when prices fall. Before treating a high yield as an opportunity, check which side of that fraction is doing the work.
Growth alone does not make a market
The same trap runs the other way.
Exeter has the strongest five-year population growth of all 30 locations at 9.57%. It ranks 26th, with a score of 38.91. Prices are high at £281,197, house-price momentum is negative at -2.60%, the rental market is slow at 82 days, and its regeneration score is one of the lowest at 4/10.
Newport leads house-price momentum at 5.63%. It ranks 21st.
Greater London scores a perfect 10/10 for regeneration, driven by schemes like the £10bn Old Oak programme, and commands the highest average rent in Britain at £2,302 a month. It ranks 28th of 30, because a £544,814 average price and house-price momentum of -2.63% overwhelm everything else.
What this means for investors. Population growth tells you demand is coming. It does not tell you that you can buy at a price where that demand pays you. Regeneration tells you a city is investing in itself. It does not tell you the entry cost leaves room for a return.
Affordability changes the arithmetic more than people expect
Hull has the lowest average property price in the study at £133,485. That is roughly a quarter of London’s. It finishes fifth overall on 67.60, with a 6.20% yield, 7.2% rental growth and 3.90% house-price momentum. Slower population growth (2.48%) and a 90-day rental market are what keep it out of the top four.
Stoke-on-Trent tells a similar story at sixth, with a £151,355 average price, 4.8% rental growth and the third-strongest employment growth in the index at 1.87%.
Average price carries a 15% weight in our model, second only to yield, and that is deliberate. Acquisition cost is the constraint that decides whether you buy one unit or five.
What this means for investors. If you are scaling rather than buying a single flat, entry price is not a detail, it is the thing that determines portfolio size. Two properties in Hull cost less than one in Bournemouth, and Hull outranks it by 36 points.
The North West: two routes to the same place
Liverpool and Manchester both make the top four and get there differently, which is useful if you are choosing between them.
Liverpool is third on 73.13 and is the most balanced performer in the entire index. It leads on nothing. A £184,670 average price, 5.88% yield, 5.9% rental growth, 5.01% population growth, 1.28% employment growth, 3.77% house-price momentum, 8/10 regeneration. Seven reasonable numbers, no weak link. That is exactly what a multi-factor index is built to surface and what a single-metric table would miss entirely.
Manchester is fourth on 71.85 and is the more expensive of the two at £247,469. It compensates with 8.01% population growth, a 6.59% yield, a tight 52-day rental market, positive employment growth and a maximum 10/10 for regeneration, reflecting the £86m Good Growth programme and Victoria North.
I operate in Manchester, so I will be straight about the trade-off. You pay more to get in here than in Liverpool or Glasgow. What you are buying is the depth of tenant demand and the length of the regeneration pipeline. For a first purchase, Liverpool’s entry price is easier. For a portfolio you intend to hold for a decade, Manchester’s fundamentals are harder to argue with.
What this means for investors. Two cities 35 miles apart can both be strong buys for opposite reasons. Match the market to your position: capital available, time horizon, and whether you are buying one unit or building a block.
The full ranking
All 30 locations with every underlying figure. Select any column to re-sort, or any row to show that city on the map.
| # | Location | Score | Avg price | Gross yield | Avg rent | Rent growth | Days unlet | Population | Employment | HPI momentum | Regen |
|---|
How we built it
Eight measures, each weighted according to how much we think it actually bears on a scaling investor’s decision.
| Measure | Weight | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| Gross rental yield | 20% | Core income potential relative to acquisition cost |
| Average property price | 15% | How realistically you can acquire, and scale |
| Rental growth | 12.5% | Whether tenant demand is pushing rents upward |
| Rental market tightness | 12.5% | How quickly rental stock is absorbed |
| Population growth | 10% | Underlying five-year demand for housing |
| Employment growth | 10% | Whether the local economy supports tenant incomes |
| House-price momentum | 10% | Recent direction of the sales market |
| Regeneration and infrastructure | 10% | Confirmed, deliverable projects |
The seven continuous metrics are winsorised at the 5th and 95th percentiles, which stops one extreme value from distorting the whole table. They are then ranked in the favourable direction, converted to a true 0 to 100 rank-percentile score, and multiplied by their weight. The regeneration score is bounded and contributes directly as points out of 10.
Reference date is 31 July 2026, with a minimum city size of 100,000 residents.
Where the data comes from
| Component | Source |
|---|---|
| Average price and house-price momentum | UK House Price Index, HM Land Registry, May 2026 release |
| Average rent and rental growth | ONS Price Index of Private Rents, June 2026 |
| Population growth | ONS Explore Local Statistics, mid-2019 to mid-2024 |
| Gross rental yield | Calculated from the ONS rent and UK HPI price data |
| Employment growth | ONS and HMRC PAYE RTI, resident payrolled employees, May 2023 to May 2026 |
| Rental market tightness | Home.co.uk live listings, late-July 2026 snapshot |
| Regeneration and infrastructure | Local authorities, combined authorities, development corporations, Homes England, GOV.UK |
What this index is not
I would rather set these limits out myself than have someone else find them.
It covers 30 selected major investment locations in England, Wales and Scotland. It is not an exhaustive ranking of every UK city. Northern Ireland is excluded because the source series were not aligned to the same reference periods for this edition, which is why we describe the scope as Great Britain rather than the UK where precision matters.
It measures conditions entering 2027. It is not a forecast of future returns or house-price growth. Gross yield is indicative and excludes finance, management, maintenance, service charges, insurance, voids and tax, so it is a comparison tool, not a projection of what you would bank.
Rental market tightness uses median days currently unlet as a proxy for how fast stock is absorbed. It is not a count of tenant enquiries. Scottish rental geographies use Broad Rental Market Areas, which do not map perfectly onto council-area price geographies. Recent HPI and PAYE figures may be revised by their publishers.
What I would actually do with this
If you own one or two properties and you are deciding where to buy next, the affordability cluster is where I would look first. Hull, Stoke-on-Trent, Liverpool and Glasgow all let you acquire at a price that leaves room for a return, and all four have rental fundamentals underneath the yield rather than just a good-looking ratio.
If you are already past a handful of units and thinking about a block, the calculation changes. Depth of rental market and length of regeneration pipeline start to matter more than entry price, because you need somewhere you can keep buying and keep letting. That is the argument for Manchester and Newcastle.
And if you are looking at a city because it topped one table somewhere, check the other seven measures before you commit. On this dataset, that habit would have kept you out of Aberdeen, Exeter and Newport, all of which lead a metric and none of which are in the top 15 overall.
For journalists
The index is free to report with attribution to the Beyond Stays UK Property Investor Index 2026/27. Four documents form a complete audit trail from source data through methodology to final result: the research specification, the complete methodology, the research index and evidence pack, and the final ranking and findings.
For the underlying scoring workbook, a regional data cut, or commentary on a specific city, email [email protected]. Bespoke regional tables usually take a working day.