Renfrewshire's 9.9% yield beats Guildford's by £227 a month

You've read the same regional yield table a dozen times this year, and by now you know the trick: a headline gross yield that quietly evaporates the moment you check it against Section 24 and the real price of the average property in that area. So when a name you don't normally see near the top of a rental ranking turns up not once but twice at the very top of a genuinely new national dataset, the sensible reaction is scepticism first and curiosity second. UK Finance's first annual regional mortgage compendium puts two Scottish local authorities at a 9.9% gross yield apiece, ahead of every other place in Britain. This time, running the numbers doesn't debunk the headline. It's the equivalent purchase in the South East that falls apart instead.

At each area's own average buy-to-let purchase price, Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire clear a positive cash flow after tax at both the basic and higher rate. A comparable purchase in Guildford, at a genuine 5.89% yield, turns a higher-rate taxpayer roughly £174 a month into the red once Section 24 is applied, a gap of £227 a month against the same investor buying in Renfrewshire.

Ten places that top a genuinely new national ranking, and all ten are in Scotland

UK Finance's Loans Where We Live: Regional mortgage market compendium 2026, published 5 May 2026 and built from actual 2025 buy-to-let mortgage completions rather than an estimate, ranks gross rental yield by local authority for the first time at this level of detail. Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire tie for first place at 9.9%, followed by North Lanarkshire and Aberdeen City at 9.6%, East Ayrshire also at 9.6%, Inverclyde at 9.5%, Falkirk and Dundee City at 9.4%, and Clackmannanshire and South Lanarkshire at 9.3%. Every one of the ten highest-yielding local authorities in the country sits in Scotland. At the other end, the lowest yields cluster in the South of England: South Hams at 5.0%, Kensington and Chelsea at 5.1%, Three Rivers at 5.2%, and Cambridge and Harborough both at 5.3%.

West Dunbartonshire also happens to be the fifth most affordable local authority in Britain for ordinary homebuyers, at 17.7% of gross income on initial mortgage payments, against 25.7% in the least affordable, North Norfolk, and 25.1% in Hillingdon (UK Finance, same report). Cheap entry prices for owner-occupiers and high yields for landlords are two sides of the same coin here, not a coincidence.

So if you've spent this year checking marketed yields that don't survive contact with the real average price, this is worth checking too, because unlike most of those, it's built from completed transactions rather than a marketing estimate.

What buying at the average actually costs, and earns

The same UK Finance data gives the average buy-to-let purchase price alongside the yield. In Renfrewshire, that's roughly £68,800; in West Dunbartonshire, roughly £67,800. For comparison, a buy-to-let purchase in Guildford, in the South East, averages roughly £309,600 at a genuine 5.89% gross yield (UK Finance, 2026), a figure this site has previously found regional yield claims overstate, as in the South East's marketed 5.3% regional yield, which still left a higher-rate taxpayer roughly £431 a month out of pocket at the regional average.

At 75% loan-to-value and the current average buy-to-let rate of 5.42% (Moneyfacts, 1 July 2026), a Renfrewshire purchase needs a £17,200 deposit against a £51,600 loan, and rent of roughly £570 a month against that price and yield. West Dunbartonshire is almost identical: a £17,000 deposit, a £50,900 loan and roughly £560 a month in rent. Guildford, by contrast, needs a £77,400 deposit against a £232,200 loan, with rent of roughly £1,519 a month.

So the entry cost in either Scottish local authority is a fraction of the South East equivalent, which matters as much for how quickly you could redeploy capital as for the yield itself.

The cash flow, before tax

Strip out a 12% management fee, a 5% maintenance reserve, landlord buildings insurance of roughly £312 a year (ABI Premium Tracker, early 2026) and a one-month annual void allowance, and the Renfrewshire purchase runs at roughly £166 a month positive before tax, with West Dunbartonshire close behind at roughly £162 a month. The Guildford purchase, on the same assumptions, clears the mortgage interest by only around £59 a month, a wafer-thin margin, before a single void month, rate rise or repair bill.

So even before Section 24 enters the picture, the Scottish purchases are carrying roughly three times the monthly buffer of the Guildford one, which is what actually determines whether a bad month tips a purchase into the red.

Section 24 turns Guildford negative. It barely dents Scotland.

Because mortgage interest can no longer be deducted as a business expense, a landlord pays income tax on rental profit before interest relief and claims a 20% credit against the interest paid instead. On the Renfrewshire purchase, annual mortgage interest of roughly £2,800 sits comfortably below the roughly £4,800 profit before interest relief, so the credit applies in full. A higher-rate (40%) taxpayer's cash flow after tax comes out at roughly £53 a month; a basic-rate (20%) taxpayer keeps roughly £133 a month. West Dunbartonshire is close behind at roughly £51 a month higher-rate and £130 a month basic-rate.

Guildford tells a different story. The higher-rate tax bill on its larger profit, even after the 20% credit, takes the purchase from a roughly £59 a month pre-tax surplus to roughly £174 a month underwater, a genuine monthly loss rather than a thin margin. A basic-rate taxpayer just about holds on at roughly £47 a month. Run your own numbers through our Section 24 tax calculator before assuming either outcome applies to your own portfolio.

So for a higher-rate taxpayer specifically, the same tax rule produces a real loss in one location and a real, if modest, profit in the other, a gap of roughly £227 a month, or £2,724 a year, between two purchases made at each area's own average price.

Does buying in Scotland mean paying Scottish income tax?

No, and this catches people out. Income tax on rental profit follows the landlord's own tax residence, not the location of the property. If you already live and pay tax in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, rental profit from a Renfrewshire or West Dunbartonshire purchase is still taxed at rUK rates, including the 40% higher rate used above. Only a Scottish-resident landlord pays Scottish income tax on that profit, and the Scottish higher rate for 2026-27 is 42% from £43,663, two points above the rest of the UK. Run the same Renfrewshire numbers through a Scottish-resident higher-rate taxpayer's own tax return and the cash flow drops slightly, to roughly £45 a month, £8 a month less than an equivalent English, Welsh or Northern Irish higher-rate taxpayer buying the identical property.

So if you're a Yorkshire-based higher-rate taxpayer weighing whether redeploying capital into Scotland changes your own tax position, it doesn't: your tax residence travels with you, not with the postcode of the property.

Stamp duty is where Scotland pulls further ahead

Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), not Stamp Duty Land Tax, at 0% up to £145,000, 2% up to £250,000, 5% up to £325,000, 10% up to £750,000 and 12% above, with a further Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) of 8% on any second property, raised from 6% on 5 December 2024 and confirmed frozen through 2026-27. Because both Scottish purchases sit below the £145,000 nil-rate threshold, the entire tax bill is the 8% ADS charge: roughly £5,500 in Renfrewshire and £5,400 in West Dunbartonshire. Guildford, taxed under England's SDLT bands plus its own 5% additional-property surcharge, comes to close to £21,000, nearly four times as much upfront tax for a comparable buy-to-let purchase. Check your own figure with our stamp duty calculator before assuming the England-wide numbers apply north of the border.

So the upfront tax gap alone is worth years of the eventual monthly cash flow difference, paid in one lump sum before the first month's rent lands, which changes how much capital you actually need to redeploy in the first place.

The catch: Scotland isn't a lighter-touch regulatory regime

If part of the appeal of moving capital north is escaping England's tightening rental regulation, that's not the trade on offer. Scotland replaced assured shorthold tenancies with the Private Residential Tenancy in 2017, abolishing no-fault eviction and introducing open-ended tenancies years before England's Renters' Rights Act did the same this year. Landlord registration has been mandatory in every Scottish local authority since 2004, long before England's Private Rented Sector Database began its region-by-region rollout. Scotland also retains Rent Pressure Zone powers, unused so far but available to any local authority that wants them.

So treat this as a genuine tax and yield decision on its own merits, not as a way of dodging tenant protections or registration duties, because Scotland got there first on both.

What this means for you

The maths points toward Renfrewshire and West Dunbartonshire clearing a genuine, if modest, monthly profit after Section 24 at both tax rates, on properties bought at each area's own average price, while a comparable Guildford purchase does the opposite for a higher-rate taxpayer specifically. Frankly, if you're sitting on a marginal higher-rate property in the South East and have been putting off the decision to sell and redeploy, this is the kind of comparison that should move that decision along, not just prompt another spreadsheet. Most investors who run this calculation end up treating the local authority average as a starting screen rather than the final word: verify the actual rent and condition on the specific street, use a lender and solicitor familiar with Scotland's missives-based conveyancing rather than assuming an England-style exchange and completion process, and factor in the modestly higher tax rate if you become a Scottish taxpayer yourself. None of that changes the headline finding. On the numbers UK Finance has published, Scotland's top yields are the rare regional claim on this site that survives every check we've thrown at it.