5 November 2026 · The numbers
3,777 properties. Three that pay.
Every North East property under £120,000, screened against sold comparables on its own street and against the rent. Three of 2,627 houses leave a landlord £250 a month.
I pulled every property for sale in the North East under £120,000 from Property Engine's live search — no retirement homes, no new builds, no auctions, nothing sold, nothing withdrawn. 3,777 listings.
Of those, 2,627 are houses rather than flats. For every one of them I found the street it sits on, asked the Land Registry what has actually sold on that street, kept only sales of the same kind of house, and then ran the rent.
Three of the 2,627 leave a landlord £250 a month.
That is not a typo, and it is not a reason to give up. It is the most useful number I have ever published, because it explains a year of frustration in one line: the stock is priced at what sellers hope for, and the rent is priced at what the market delivers, and the gap between the two is the whole problem.
What the 3,777 look like
1,003 of the 2,627 houses have already been reduced from their first asking price — 38%. More than a third of the market has tried a price and been told no.
582 have been back on the market at least once — 22%. A sale fell through on nearly a quarter of everything for sale.
87 are asking less than the cheapest recent sale on their own street. These are the ones that get sent to me as bargains. Of those 87, exactly one clears £250 a month after the mortgage.
The median asking price across all 2,627 is £85,000.
The gap, town by town
This is the part worth reading twice. For each town I took the three-bedroom rent that landlords are actually agreeing — not the asking rent — and worked out the highest price that still leaves £250 a month after 12% management, £233 running costs and a mortgage at 6.5% on 75% of the price. Then I put the town's median asking price next to it.
| Town | Median asking (3-bed) | What works | Asking is | |---|---|---|---| | Sunderland | £100,000 | £65,231 | 1.5× | | Thornaby | £82,500 | £53,317 | 1.5× | | Billingham | £110,000 | £62,631 | 1.8× | | Darlington | £99,950 | £54,400 | 1.8× | | Seaham | £95,000 | £48,985 | 1.9× | | Stockton-on-Tees | £100,000 | £46,169 | 2.2× | | Middlesbrough | £95,000 | £38,154 | 2.5× | | Hartlepool | £85,000 | £31,655 | 2.7× | | Peterlee | £89,950 | £30,139 | 3.0× |
The typical three-bedroom house in Peterlee asks three times what its rent can carry. In Hartlepool it is 2.7 times. In Middlesbrough 2.5. Even in Sunderland — the strongest town on the list, where three-beds agree at £850 — the median asking price is half again what works.
So when you cannot find anything, you are not looking badly. You are looking at a market that is priced for a different interest rate than the one we have.
Why the numbers moved this week
The Bank of England raised the base rate to 4% yesterday, the first rise since 2023, on a 9–0 vote. Buy-to-let mortgage pricing follows the base rate, so I have run these ceilings at 6.5% rather than the 6% I used a week ago.
At 6% there were five houses in the North East that worked. At 6.5% there are three. A quarter point removed two of them, and took £5,400 off the maximum price in Sunderland.
That is not a market failure. It is arithmetic: £250 is a fixed target, so every £1 a month of extra cost takes about £2,500 off the price that can support it.
The one I would buy, and what it tells you
A three-bedroom terrace in Sunderland at £63,500. It has been on the market since February and has already been reduced £6,500. Three-bedrooms there agree at £850, and twelve houses have sold on the same street, most recently at £85,000.
At 6.5% it leaves £257 a month. It passes — by seven pounds.
And that is the point. The best house in 2,627 does not clear the target comfortably. It clears it by seven pounds, on a price that has already been cut, in the best town on the list, with twelve sold comparables behind it.
How to use this
Work out your own ceiling before you look at a single house. Rent the town actually achieves, multiplied by 0.88 to take off management, minus £233 running costs, minus the mortgage interest on 75% of the price. If what is left is under £250, the price is too high — however nice the house is, and however good the discount looks.
Do not trust a discount. 87 houses in this study are cheaper than anything has sold for on their street, and one of them works. Cheap is a starting question, not an answer.
And check the rate, not the headline. The base rate moved this week. If your sums were done last month, they are out of date by about five thousand pounds a house.
---
All figures modelled from Property Engine's live North East search (3,777 listings, 2,627 houses, 2,283 with a same-type sold comparable on the same street), HM Land Registry price paid data, and let-agreed rents recorded in the North East. Costs: 12% management, £233 monthly running costs, £40 insurance, 75% loan to value, interest-only at 6.5%. The 6.5% is a modelled rate after the 5 November 2026 base rate rise, not a quoted lender product.
---
I run this across the whole North East every morning. If you want the current list for your town, tell me the town and I will send the numbers: mikebells.co.uk/contact
Tell us what you are looking for
Sent straight to me, not to a list
If you are looking for something specific in the North East — a street, a yield, a budget — describe it here. I reply to everything within one working day, and there is no charge for asking.
If you want the weekly version — what I screened, what the numbers said, and what I got wrong — it is free here.