Buy to Let City Tracker 2024: Bristol is the Top City to Make your Next Investment

Ready to expand your buy to let portfolio and want to make sure you get the best return on your investment possible?

We’ve done some of the legwork for you, with the new Aldermore Buy to Let City Tracker* – and discovered that Bristol is the place to be.

Our annual tracker looks to explore which cities in the UK are best for landlords like you looking to acquire new property. The tracker looks at five key indicators that impact buy to let desirability:

Average total rent
The best short-term returns through yield
Long-term return through house price growth over the past decade
The lowest number of vacancies as a proportion of total housing stock, and
The percentage of the city population in the rental market

Ranking	2023	+/-change	2022 ranking	2021 ranking
1	Bristol	+2	Manchester	Bristol
2	Manchester	-1	London	Oxford
3	Coventry	+7	Bristol	Cambridge
4	Brighton	+10	Cambridge	Manchester
5	London	-3	Peterborough	Luton
6	Cambridge	-2	Milton Keynes	London
7	Portsmouth	+16	Luton	Northampton
8	Glasgow	+9	Reading	Brighton
9	Basildon	+3	Southend	Reading
10	Milton Keynes	-4	Coventry	Norwich

Why Buy in Bristol?

Bristol has jumped to the top of the leaderboard this year due to a number of factors working in its favour:

Good rental prospects
High proportion of long-term private renters available
Low number of properties currently vacant.

You’ll also find a good growth on returns in Bristol, with an annual increase of 6.6%. However, if you’re looking to make a fast investment, perhaps this isn’t quite the city for you, with short-term yields sitting at 4.4%.

Manchester is a close second

Manchester dropped one place this year from the top spot. Although the average rent per room is lower than Bristol at £461, and the proportion of vacancies in properties is lower at 0.9% compared to the national average of 1.2%, long term returns are very appealing for landlords at +6.1% with a healthy market of tenants available (31%).

Other cities in southern England also provided positive prospects for landlords including Brighton, London and Reading with higher average rents per room and strong demand from renters.

Scotland climbs into the top rankings

For the first time since the City Tracker was launched five years ago, a Scottish city has entered the top ten with Glasgow now in 8^th place. The city provides good rental returns for landlords at £471 and offers one of the highest short-term returns of 8.6%, higher than the average of 5.5%.

Average rent has increased

The City Index Tracker shows the average rent per room has steadily increased, in 2021 the average room for rent was £423, while in 2022 it was £432 and this year increased to £455. Research by Aldermore² found that nine out of 10 landlords (94%) increased the rent they charge in the last 12 months. With the current position of the rental market, the research also revealed just under three quarters (73%) of landlords have seen an increase in tenant demand for their properties in the last year.

Aldermore’s Buy-to-Let City Tracker was designed by Opinium and carried out across 500 landlords between 4-9^th November 2023. It comprises of five core indicators: average rent per room per month, short-term yield for a new buy-to-let purchase, average property price rise over the last 10 years, proportion of vacant properties in the city and size of the private rental market. The index uses a series of secondary data sources including the ONS, Census and other official housing statistics.

Buy to let mortgages designed for you

To find out more about Aldermore’s range of mortgages for buy to let landlords, visit our buy to let mortgages page.

Find out more about our buy to let mortgages