Gateshead named amongst the top 5 places to buy instead of renting

‘Award-winning’ estate agency Yopa has named Gateshead as one of the top five best value places in Great Britain to buy instead of rent.

In just 19 years of renting, people in Gateshead would spend the same amount of money as it takes to raise a deposit and pay off a mortgage with interest. In comparison, the average number of rental years it would take to become a mortgage-free homeowner in all of the locations surveyed is 30.95.

In Worcester, at the bottom of our list, it’s almost double the national average at a jaw-dropping 59.4 years. Swansea and Salford rank the most affordable, while Newport, Portsmouth, and Manchester tied with Dundee make the rest of the top five places to buy instead of rent, thanks to higher rental costs and comparatively affordable home ownership.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow, Nottingham, Coventry, and Norwich also place in the top ten. Yopa’s study helps would-be buyers identify the locations where getting on the property ladder is a better long-term financial decision than renting. These locations may also present an opportunity for Buy-to-Let investors thanks to generous rental yields compared to the cost of a mortgage.

According to Zoopla, at the end of 2021 rental prices were rising at their fastest rate in 13 years. The cost-of-living crisis is also forcing many people to re-evaluate their finances and consider their future in the property market.

Mike Scott, chief analyst at Yopa, commented: “While rents do vary greatly across the country, there is an even wider variation in house prices, and so it tends to be the cheaper areas where house prices are a lower multiple of average rents, as we see in the results of this survey.

“That makes these lower-priced areas attractive targets for landlords looking for investment properties as well as for renters looking to get their feet on the property ladder. With rents being less volatile than house prices, these regions may see slower house price growth during boom times with their prices being to some extent driven by rental yields.

“But on the other hand, if in the future there is a downturn in house prices, it would probably affect these regions less since the rental yields would help to underpin prices.”

By Mark Adair – Correspondent, Bdaily