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Our post about investing in property outside of London generated a huge amount of interest. It seems that many of our readers were interested in the idea of avoiding the extraordinarily high property prices of the capital and wanted to look into investing in other places. This prompted us to do a bit more research and expand on the subject.

Here we’re going to look at investing in other city locations using York as an example. We’re in regular contact with several letting agencies in York, so know already that the city is a good place to invest. In addition, the latest statistics indicate that rental rates in the city have recently risen by over 20%. It’s a great example of somewhere outside of the capital where property investments have really paid off.

Several cities in the UK have the potential to take off in the same way as York. Below we take a closer look at why York has become such a good place for people to invest in property.

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York is a university city

Demand for student accommodation is definitely growing in the UK. Up until this year, the number of students each university could take was capped. This limited the number of people who could study in the UK, but despite this cap demand for student accommodation outstripped availability everywhere. Now that the cap on student numbers no longer exists, demand for accommodation in university cities can only increase even more.

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York is a tourist city

The city of York is a big tourist destination that is becoming more & more popular. This year visitor numbers are up by 10% and that’s the 5th year tourist numbers have gone up.

Increasingly, visitors to the UK are rejecting hotel & bed and breakfast accommodation. Many are opting instead to rent houses or flats and tourists are now renting individual rooms in people’s homes.

This has created another pool of potential renters for both home-owners and landlords in the city. Tourists visit the city of York all year round and they pay well for accommodation, so it easy to make a profit leasing out holiday properties in the city and the surrounding area.

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York has a growing population

Property prices and rent have risen so much in the South East that many people can no longer afford to live there. People are increasingly moving further north and York is proving to be one of the most popular destinations for people looking for a new place to live.

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York has fantastic amenities

York has great links with the rest of the UK. London is just a two-hour train journey away and Manchester is just an hour and a quarter away.

The fact that it is a student city and a tourist destination means that there is no shortage of things for people to do and see in the area. This makes it very attractive as a place to live for young people who cannot afford to set up home in the South East.

Several other cities in the UK tick the same boxes as York. Edinburgh, Oxford and Coventry are just three of them and all of them offer great value for money when it comes to investment property.

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