Strensall (YO32) Leads North Yorkshire Yields at 5.9%

Yields across 310 North Yorkshire postcodes range from 5.9% in Strensall (YO32) down to the high-4% band in the county's most expensive York postcodes. That is a spread of more than one percentage point from the best buy-to-let postcode to the weakest. The practical implication is blunt: in North Yorkshire, where you buy inside the county matters at least as much as how you choose to let the property. This ranking shows which postcodes lead on gross yield, which command the headline prices, and why the pattern looks the way it does.

Strensall (YO32) Tops the Ranking at 5.9% Gross Yield

The postcodes below rank the top buy-to-let yields across the county's 3-bed house market. The dashboard shows the equivalent holiday let yield per postcode for a direct strategy comparison.

Gross yields = annual income / sale price. Based on 3-bed house medians. The dashboard shows every property type and bedroom count.

Commuter Villages and Market Towns Drive the Top of the Table

Strensall (YO32) leads the ranking because it combines a specific North Yorkshire archetype: an established commuter village sitting inside the York travel-to-work area, with enough housing stock and family-tenant demand to keep rents firm, but sale prices held below the tourist-premium postcodes further north and west. That pattern, good schools, a station or fast road link, and no national-park premium, is what lets the rent-to-price ratio stay elevated. The yield does not come from weak pricing, it comes from rental demand that the wider commuter belt keeps refreshing.

York (YO19) and the other York-orbit postcodes on the list tell a similar story. York itself is a dual-engine rental market, university tenants plus NHS and rail-industry employment, which props up 3-bed house rents at a level most English market towns cannot match. Buyers pay for that demand, but not enough to crush yields the way central-London or Cotswolds pricing would. These are textbook buy-to-let postcodes: the tenant pool is deep, voids are short, and the holiday let premium is modest because visitor demand concentrates inside the city walls rather than in the surrounding villages.

North Yorkshire (BD23) and North Yorkshire (BD24) earn their place through a different mechanism. These western Yorkshire Dales postcodes sit on the tourist-demand map, which lifts their holiday let yields noticeably above the buy-to-let figure, but they also retain enough year-round resident demand to work as standard buy-to-lets. An investor here has optionality: the same property underwrites as a conventional let, and the holiday let upside is a live alternative rather than a fantasy.

The Yield-Price Trade-Off Is the Whole Story

The inverse relationship between entry price and gross yield is visible across most of the North Yorkshire table, though the top commuter postcodes like Strensall (YO32) are an exception where strong rental demand lifts both price and yield together. An investor buying at £295,337 in Strensall (YO32) is paying above the county median of £260,623, but still well below the most expensive postcodes in the county which push past £392,207. Rent in the top-yield postcodes does not fall anywhere near as fast as price does, which is what produces the yield advantage. Premium postcodes charge an amenity and capital-growth premium that buyers willingly pay, but that premium sits in the numerator of the price, not the rent, so the yield compresses.

The other way to read the same pattern: the top suburb yields 5.9% against a county median of 5.4%. A 3-bed house purchase at £295,337 requires a meaningfully smaller deposit than a top-end purchase at £392,207, even though it sits above the county-median £260,623. The capital-risk profile is different, the leverage behaves differently, and the exit market is different. A higher yield does not mean a better investment, it means a different one.

High-Demand Postcodes Trade Yield for Liquidity and Growth

For context, here is how some of North Yorkshire's most in-demand postcodes compare. These are the established market-town and national-park-adjacent postcodes where investors typically accept lower buy-to-let yields in exchange for capital growth, liquidity on exit, and stronger holiday let performance.

High-demand postcodes for context. Same methodology as the yield ranking above.

The buy-to-let yield in most premium North Yorkshire postcodes sits below the county median because buyers are pricing in amenity (Dales and Moors access, listed stone property, top-decile schools) and capital growth, not rental income. The holiday let picture tells a different story. In the postcodes closest to the national parks and the coast, visitor demand re-rates the economics, and the holiday let gross yield can sit well above the buy-to-let figure. That does not automatically make them better holiday let purchases: the FHL tax regime was abolished from April 2025, holiday lets and buy-to-let are now taxed equivalently, so the financial comparison between the two strategies is more important than ever. Running costs on a holiday let are also substantially higher (cleaning, consumables, platform fees, voids between stays), which the headline gross yield does not reflect.

What the Ranking Does Not Capture

Gross yield is rent divided by price, which means a high yield can signal depressed prices rather than strong rents. Several of the mid-table North Yorkshire postcodes sit in that category, and investors should look at rent levels and tenant-pool depth in isolation before treating yield as the primary decision variable. Capital growth is the second thing the table does not show. Premium York postcodes and national-park-adjacent villages have historically delivered stronger price appreciation than the highest-yielding commuter postcodes, and total return (income plus growth) can favour the premium side of the table over a 10-year hold.

Vacancy risk is the third omission. Some higher-yield rural and small-market-town postcodes have thin rental pools: a single long void can wipe out a year of the yield advantage. Data age is the fourth: medians lag when a postcode re-rates quickly, which in North Yorkshire tends to happen in the Dales and along the coastal strip when holiday let demand shifts. The figures here reflect market conditions as of April 2026, and individual properties within each postcode vary significantly around the median.

View North Yorkshire in the dashboard → Free preview · every bedroom count and property type

North Yorkshire's Top Yields Sit Near the Regional Median

Placed against regional and national benchmarks, North Yorkshire looks like a balanced rather than standout yield market. The county-median buy-to-let yield of 5.4% sits close to the Yorkshire and The Humber regional average of 5.6% and close to the UK average of 5.7%. The top postcode at 5.9% clears both benchmarks, but not by a wide margin, and the bottom end of the county's 310 postcodes trails both. The message is not that the county is unusually strong or weak, it is that the internal spread is what matters: a well-chosen postcode inside North Yorkshire can outperform, and a poorly-chosen one can underperform the national median by a meaningful amount. Holiday let gross yields look stronger (the county median is 10.0%) but carry the tax-regime change and higher running costs. Greater London's 90-day night cap does not apply here.

The 90-day rule applies only inside Greater London under the Deregulation Act 2015. North Yorkshire sits well outside that boundary, so there is no statutory night cap. Converting a dwelling to a holiday let can still require planning permission (change of use) in some local planning authorities, particularly in the national parks, and new second-home council tax premiums introduced under the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act apply in several North Yorkshire districts. Confirm the specific position with the relevant local authority before you commit.

For a neighbouring-market comparison, see Leeds Holiday Lets Yield 9.0%, but Costs Eat Half. For the holiday-let angle on the same county, see North Yorkshire Holiday Lets Double Buy-to-Let Gross Revenue.

Data reflects market conditions as of April 2026. Full methodology: market score methodology and data sources.

This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or legal advice. Regulations and market conditions change frequently. Verify current rules with local authorities before making investment decisions.