If you look at the UK House Price Index, the north-east of England is by far the cheapest location to buy a house , the average price for a house is just £125,650 as compared to the national average house price across England being £251,233.
In the north-east you can find brick terraced houses for as little as £49,900 and some of these come with tenants in place, there is a great opportunity for investors to enter the UK’s buy-to-let market at a low entry point with consistent and healthy returns. While the average national return on rental properties is just 4.2%, the North East property often delivers more favourable returns of up to 10%.
The north-east region is made up of Tyne and Wear, Teesside, County Durham and Northumberland, it has a population of around 2.6 million.The biggest city in the North East is Newcastle but there are other great investments areas like Sunderland, Durham, Bishop Auckland, North Shields, Hartlepool, Hexham, Darlington, Chester le Street, Stockton-on-Tees, Jarrow and Morpeth.
The economy in the north is starting to see an upturn in recent years, the economic gap with other parts of the country is closing. According to the recent Government statistics, the North East of England has one of the fast growing economies in all of the UK, estimated to be worth £35.5bn.
We have seen the opening of many great new manufacturing plants in the north-east, examples of these are Nissan in Sunderland and Hitachi in Durham. The Sunderland Nissan factory is Nissan’s biggest car plant globally and ranked among the world’s top five leading car-makers.
The north-east is a very popular student location, Newcastle has the largest student population in the north-east and has been named as the UK’s ‘Best University City’ for the past three years running by MSN .You also have Sunderland, Durham and Middlesbrough where there are also great universities. There will always be a demand for accommodation in university towns and cities, houses in the right locations are highly sought after.
Newcastle was recently voted as the best city for quality of life and also the UK’s happiest city. Durham has its famous University with a thriving commercial sector alongside it. Sunderland and Middlesbrough have been voted numbers 1 and 2 respectively as the best places to invest in student property.
The north-east is competing to become the UK’s main digital hub, there has been huge investments in recent years, the North East is home to IT companies like Sage, Hewlett-Packard and ZeroLight who all contribute to the regions digital and IT sector, this sector is estimated to be worth around £1.1bn to the economy.
But it is not just the Digital Hub or Universities that are tempting companies away from the South, there is no doubt that commercial office space has played a major part. Commercial office space in the North East is approximately 30% cheaper than in other cities around the UK and is almost 68% cheaper than in London.
Even-though property prices are low as compared to other parts of the UK all of the above factors mean there is a strong demand for property to rent. The influx of students and corporate employees are pushing a strong rental market. One recent study done shows that tenant demand in the north-east experienced the highest increase of any UK region in 2017. Another recent report from The Telegraph says the north-east England offers some of the best prospects for buy to let investors.
Now is the time to invest in property in the North East of England, with offices in Newcastle and Manchester our team of property specialists have expert, in-depth knowledge of the best buy-to-let opportunities in North East of England.
If you would like more information about these UK buy to let opportunities please email Mike or any of the team at Global at
