5 November 2026 · The numbers
I compared 221 houses to their own street. Here is what below market value actually means
221 three-bedroom houses, 197 with a sold comparable on the same street. 23 looked cheap, 5 were not the whole house, and 3 could pay a landlord.
Every week someone sends me a listing that looks cheap. It is usually on a street where nothing has sold for years, next to a new-build estate, or it is not the whole house.
So I did the comparison properly. Two hundred and twenty-one three-bedroom houses at £90,000 or less across the North East. For each one I found the street, asked the Land Registry what has actually sold on that street, kept only sales of the same kind of house, and put the asking price beside them.
One hundred and ninety-seven of them had at least one comparable. Here is what came back.
What the 197 look like
One hundred and sixty sit inside their own street's price range. Not cheap, not expensive — a normal house on a normal street, priced at what the street does.
Fourteen ask more than anything has ever sold for on their street. That is the quiet answer to "why is everything so expensive" — a lot of it is, and the seller is waiting for a buyer who doesn't check.
Twenty-three ask less than the cheapest recent sale on their own street. Those are the ones that get sent to me. And this is where it gets interesting.
Of the 23 that look cheap, 5 are not the whole house
Five of the twenty-three are shared ownership — a percentage of a property rather than the property.
One of them asks £22,500 for a three-bedroom house. That price exists because it is 25% of a new build that completes in March 2027. You cannot let it, you cannot sell it on at that price to anyone who wants a house, and the rent test does not apply to it at all. Another asks £53,750 for 25% of a £215,000 new build.
A shared-ownership price is not a cheap house. It is a different product, and the two cannot be compared.
The rest of the cheap list is usually a street problem
Most of the remaining eighteen sit on streets where the housing stock is mixed: a 1930s terrace at one end and a row of four-bedroom townhouses at the other. The cheapest sale on that street might be £52,000 and the dearest £367,500, and neither of them tells you anything about the house you are looking at.
One street in Spennymoor has sold nine houses between £290,000 and £645,000. A three-bedroom asking £52,500 on it is not a bargain — it is a different building on the same road.
Only three of the 197 clear the rent test
Here is the part that decides it. For the 105 houses where I hold a let-agreed rent for that town, I ran the money: 12% management, £233 running costs, £40 insurance, a mortgage at six per cent on 75% of the price.
Three leave £250 a month. Not thirty. Three.
Take the best of them. A three-bedroom terrace in Sunderland at £63,500. Three-bedrooms there are agreeing at £850 across seventeen lets. That leaves £277 a month — and its street has sold twelve houses, most recently at £85,000, so the price is supported by the street as well as by the rent.
That combination — supported by the street, and supported by the rent — is rare. It is three houses out of 197 this week.
What I would take from this
Cheap against the street is a question, not an answer. It means one of four things: it is a share, it needs work nobody has costed, it is a different building on a mixed street, or somebody needs to sell quickly. Only the last one is the opportunity people think all four are.
Check the tenure before the price. A £47,500 house on a street where the same kind of house has sold at £185,950 is not a 74% discount. It is a signal that the thing being sold is not what the picture shows.
And run the rent before the viewing. A house can be cheap against its street and still lose money every month. Of 197 properties that looked comparable to something, three could pay a landlord what he needs.
The test I use, and the one worth remembering: rent divided by price, monthly. Below 0.7% it cannot work at six per cent money. Above 1.1% it can. A house at £63,500 letting for £850 is 1.34%. A house at £52,500 letting for £650 is 1.24% — and it still fails, because the costs do not shrink with the price.
That is the whole game. Not the discount. The rent, against the price, after the costs.
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I run this comparison on every house before I put it in front of anyone. If you want the same test run on one you are looking at, send me the listing: mikebells.co.uk/contact.
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