Luton, a large town in the English county of Bedfordshire, is the best place to invest in property across England and Wales, according to the latest quarterly index from LendInvest.
The U.K.-based property lending and investing platform ranked 105 postcode areas around the two countries for their buy-to-let index released last week. It was based on four metrics: capital value growth, transaction volumes, rental yield and rental price growth.
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Luton, about 30 miles from London, is back in the top spot for the third time since December 2016, rising up from fourth place last quarter and reclaiming the top spot from Colchester, Essex—Britain’s oldest town—which in turn fell to second place.
Luton is flourishing due to its good transport links to central London, according to LendInvest. It has an average rental yield of 3.91%, capital gains of 7.29% and rental price growth of 3.70%. But transaction volumes fell 6.15%.
All figures were compared to 12 months previously.
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It wasn't the only area to see transactions fall; all 105 postcodes in the index logged negative transaction growth this quarter, the report said.
"Each of the very top performing buy-to-let locations this quarter is experiencing a slowdown in transactions—substantial falls in places, dips in other," said Ian Boden, sales director at LendInvest, in the report.
"But, the best places this quarter continue to outperform the competition well thanks to strong performances on other, equally important metrics like rental yield, capital gains and rental price growth."
The worst place for investing was found to be east central London with a yield of 2.86%, capital gains of -13.86%, rental price growth of -0.20% and transaction volume growth of -7.27%.