About

Who runs this site

Rental yield calculator is written and maintained by one person, Hugo Baldwin, based in New Zealand. There is no company or editorial team behind it — if something on the site is wrong, it's on me to fix, and you can reach me directly: windlab@gmail.com or X / Twitter.

Why it exists

I built the calculator because working out gross and net rental yield by hand, or hunting for a calculator that didn't bury the numbers in sign-up forms, was more friction than the maths deserved. The city pages and rankings followed later, to give the headline calculator some real-world reference points instead of asking you to guess a price and rent from scratch.

Methodology

The formula

Every yield figure on this site — the calculator, the city pages, the UK average — is (Annual Rental Income / Property Value) × 100, the standard gross rental yield formula. City and UK-average figures use a representative monthly rent multiplied by 12 for the annual income; the calculator on the homepage uses whatever price and rent you enter.

City figures

Each city's average price and median rent are hand-transcribed from the official statistics below, not pulled from a live feed or API. "Data as of" is the period the source statistics cover; "last reviewed" is when I last checked the figures against that source.

City Source Data as of Last reviewed
London VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Manchester VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Birmingham VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Leeds VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Bristol VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Edinburgh Scottish Government Private Sector Rent Statistics & Registers of Scotland House Price Statistics 2024 5 August 2026
Glasgow Scottish Government Private Sector Rent Statistics & Registers of Scotland House Price Statistics 2024 5 August 2026
Nottingham VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Liverpool VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026
Sheffield VOA/ONS Private Rental Market Statistics & HM Land Registry UK House Price Index 2024 5 August 2026

UK average

The UK average gross yield (6.2%) is derived the same way, from a UK-wide average monthly rent of £1,400 and average property price of £273,000, per ONS Private rent and house prices, UK: September 2026 (August 2026). It is a national mean compared against city medians, and its data is a more recent period than the city figures above, so treat the comparison as indicative rather than exact.

How figures are checked

There is no automated refresh: every figure is hand-transcribed from the cited government source, and a city's "last reviewed" date only moves when I've gone back and re-checked it against that source. Between reviews, the underlying government statistics can themselves be revised, so the figures here are a snapshot, not a live number.

Limitations

These are indicative averages for a wider region, not a specific property — rents and prices vary a lot within any one city. Gross yield also ignores running costs entirely; use the net yield fields in the calculator, and get professional advice, before making an investment decision.

Independence

This is an independent project. There is no referral or affiliate income tied to any figure on this site, and no commercial relationship influences what the calculator or city pages show. See the privacy policy for the analytics service the site uses.

Contact

Spotted a figure that looks wrong, or have a source that's more current than what's cited here? Email windlab@gmail.com and I'll take a look.