You have found a postcode you like the look of. Now you want to know what it actually pays: not the headline number a portal flashes at you, but a net figure you would trust with your own deposit. The good news is you can build that figure yourself from two free public datasets, and the maths is simple enough to do on a phone.
This is the honest version of "rental yield by postcode". No paywall, no black-box estimate, just sold prices from the Land Registry and rents from the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), combined the way a careful buyer would.
Why build it yourself instead of buying an estimate
Paid yield estimates blend asking prices, portal listings and modelled rents. Asking prices are what sellers hope for; sold prices are what buyers paid. Advertised rents are what landlords hope for; recorded rents are closer to what tenants pay. If you start from wish figures, your yield is a wish too.
Building from source data also lets you see the assumptions. When a number looks too good, you can trace exactly which input is flattering it.
The two free datasets you need
Land Registry Price Paid Data (the price)
The Land Registry publishes every registered sale in England and Wales, including the full postcode, price, date, property type and whether it was new-build or a resale. It updates monthly and is free to search or download at gov.uk.
For a yield calculation, pull the last 12 to 24 months of sales for your target postcode (or the postcode district, like LS6, if a single postcode is too thin). Take the median price for the property type you actually intend to buy, such as a two-bed terrace. The median beats the average because one refurbished flat or one probate bargain will not drag it around.
VOA private rental statistics (the rent)
The VOA publishes private rental market statistics for England, giving mean and median monthly rents by number of bedrooms. Rents are broken down by local authority and by Broad Rental Market Area (BRMA). It is free and updated periodically; use the latest release at the time of writing (July 2026) from gov.uk. For Wales, StatsWales publishes equivalent rent data.
Take the median rent for your bedroom count in the local authority that contains your postcode.
Mind the granularity gap
Here is the catch worth knowing before you trust the output. Land Registry prices are postcode-accurate. VOA rents are not: they are aggregated to local-authority or BRMA level, which can span very different streets. A prime pocket and a tired one can sit in the same authority.
So treat the VOA rent as a sensible anchor, then sense-check it against two or three current lettings on the actual street. If local adverts sit well above or below the VOA median, trust your eyes on the street and use the VOA figure as the sanity floor.
Step one: build the gross yield
Gross yield is the blunt first pass.
Gross yield = (annual rent / purchase price) x 100
Worked example for a made-up postcode (all figures illustrative):
| Input | Source | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Median 2-bed terrace price | Land Registry, last 12 months | £185,000 |
| Median 2-bed rent | VOA, local authority | £950 / month |
| Annual rent | £950 x 12 | £11,400 |
Gross yield = (£11,400 / £185,000) x 100 = 6.16%.
That is a respectable headline. But gross yield ignores every cost of actually running the place, so on its own it flatters the deal.
Step two: turn it into a net yield
Net yield is the number that matters. Strip out the running costs a landlord genuinely pays. Finance is usually left out of net yield and handled separately as cash-on-cash return, because mortgage terms vary by borrower.
Continuing the same example, with illustrative cost assumptions:
| Cost | Assumption | Annual figure |
|---|---|---|
| Void allowance | ~5% of rent | £570 |
| Letting and management | 10% of rent | £1,140 |
| Repairs and maintenance | flat allowance | £1,000 |
| Landlord insurance | quoted | £250 |
| Safety certificates (gas, EICR spread, EPC) | annualised | £150 |
| Total costs | £3,110 |
Net operating income = £11,400 - £3,110 = £8,290.
Net yield = (£8,290 / £185,000) x 100 = 4.48%.
So the honest figure for this postcode and property type is around 4.5%, not the 6.16% the gross number implied. That gap is exactly why a home-made calculation beats a headline estimate.
If you want to pressure-test different rents, void rates and cost assumptions quickly, the rental yield calculator does the same arithmetic and lets you flex the inputs without rebuilding the spreadsheet.
The stricter version: yield on total money in
For a buy-to-let, the truest denominator is not the price but every pound you sink in: price plus stamp duty, legals and any refurbishment. Buy-to-let purchases in England carry a 5% additional-property SDLT surcharge on top of standard rates (current at the time of writing, July 2026 - check the latest bands before you commit).
On our £185,000 example, taxed as an additional property under current bands:
- First £125,000 at 5% = £6,250
- £125,000 to £185,000 (£60,000) at 7% = £4,200
- Illustrative SDLT = £10,450
Add, say, £1,500 legals and £5,000 of light refurbishment, and total money in becomes roughly £201,950. Recomputing:
Net yield on total cost = (£8,290 / £201,950) x 100 = 4.10%.
Same property, same rent, but the honest figure drifts down again once purchase costs are counted. Which version you quote is a choice; the important thing is to know which one you are looking at, and to compare postcodes on the same basis.
A repeatable method for any postcode
- Pull 12 to 24 months of Land Registry sales for the postcode and property type; take the median price.
- Pull the VOA median rent for that bedroom count and local authority.
- Sense-check the VOA rent against two or three live lettings on the actual street.
- Compute gross yield.
- Subtract realistic running costs (voids, management, maintenance, insurance, certificates) for net yield.
- For the strict figure, divide net income by total money in, including SDLT and refurbishment.
- Repeat for a few nearby postcodes so you are comparing patches, not single guesses.
Do this across a shortlist and the postcodes sort themselves. A district showing 4.5% net on solid median data is worth more than one showing 7% built on a single cheap sale and an optimistic advert.
This is general information, not tax or financial advice. Figures above are illustrative worked examples, not quoted rates for any real postcode; always check the current Land Registry and VOA releases and take professional advice before you buy.
