Rental yields in Doncaster: how to work yours out

The rental yield Doncaster landlords quote to each other is nearly always the gross one, because gross is the number you can work out in your head standing in the street outside the property. Annual rent divided by purchase price, times a hundred. It takes ten seconds, and it is the reason a lot of people buy the wrong house.

The useful figure is net, and net takes longer because it requires you to be honest about costs you would rather not think about yet. This post sets out the method, deliberately without yield percentages, average rents or price figures, because your yield depends on one specific property and the numbers you can evidence for it.

What gross yield actually tells you

Gross yield is annual rent as a percentage of the purchase price. That is all it is. It ignores every cost of owning the property, so two houses with an identical gross figure can produce very different amounts of money at the end of the year.

Gross has one legitimate use. It is a filter. If you are looking at a long list of properties, gross yield sorts them quickly into ones worth pricing properly and ones that are not, and that is worth something when you are scanning portals on a Sunday evening. What it cannot do is support a decision to buy.

Two mistakes are common. The first is comparing your gross yield to somebody else's net yield without noticing. The second is comparing a gross figure calculated on the asking price with one calculated on the price actually paid, which are frequently not the same number.

The costs that sit between gross and net

Net yield is annual rent minus annual running costs, divided by the total capital you put in, times a hundred. The total capital matters. Purchase price, stamp duty, legal fees, survey, and anything you spent getting the property lettable all belong in the denominator. A refurbishment you paid for in cash is money invested whether or not it feels like it.

On the cost side, these are the ones that get missed:

• Management. If you use an agent, put the real figure in. If you self manage, put in the value of your own time, because it is not zero.
• A maintenance sinking fund. Not last year's actual repair spend, which may have been a quiet year, but a standing annual allowance for boilers, roofs and the ordinary decline of a building.
• Landlord insurance. Buildings cover at minimum, and whatever else you choose to hold.
• A void allowance. Covered in its own section below, because it is the one landlords shave.
• Safety certificates. Gas safety annually, electrical installation condition reporting on its cycle, smoke and carbon monoxide alarm provision, and the EPC itself.
• Licensing, where the property needs a licence.
• Ground rent and service charge if the property is leasehold, which quietly removes a large share of the rent on some flats.

Mortgage interest is the other obvious cost. Whether you include it depends on what you are measuring, and there is a reasonable argument for both. What is not reasonable is including it in one property's calculation and leaving it out of another's, then comparing the two. Pick a method and hold it steady across everything you look at. Our rental yield calculator runs the arithmetic both ways so you can see the gap between gross and net on your own figures rather than on somebody's illustration.

Voids are a cost, even when nothing has gone wrong

A void allowance is not a prediction that something will go wrong. It is an acceptance that tenancies end, that a changeover takes time, and that the property earns nothing while it is being cleaned, repaired and re-let.

Under the Renters' Rights Act, which commenced on 1 May 2026, tenancies are periodic with no end date and tenants give two months' notice to quit. There is no fixed term running to a date you can plan around. Turnover can therefore arrive at a point in the year you would not have chosen, including mid winter when demand is thinner. The government's overview of the Renters' Rights Act for landlords sets out how the notice regime now works.

So build a void allowance into every calculation, on every property, including the ones you expect to let easily. A yield that only holds up on the assumption of continuous occupation is not a yield. It is a hope with a percentage sign after it. Nobody can promise you occupancy levels, and you should be wary of anyone who tries.

The EPC work coming before 1 October 2030

This is the cost most commonly left out of yield calculations at the moment, and it is a real one with a date attached.

The minimum standard to let is currently EPC band E, in force since 1 April 2020 unless a valid exemption is registered. From 1 October 2030, all private rented tenancies will require EPC band C. The landlord spending cap is £10,000 per property, reduced from an originally proposed £15,000, with lower caps for homes valued under £100,000, and improvements made from October 2025 onwards count towards it. The minimum energy efficiency standard guidance covers the exemptions register and the exemption types.

For a yield calculation, the practical question is simple. What band is this property in now, what would it cost to reach C, and how does that sit against the cap? A solid walled Victorian terrace and a nineteen nineties semi with cavity walls can look similar on gross yield and be a long way apart once you price that work. EPCs are now valid for ten years rather than five, and a C rating obtained before October 2029 stays compliant through the 2030 deadline.

Treat the likely spend as capital going in, or spread it as an annual cost across the years to 2030. Either is defensible. Ignoring it is not.

How licensing changes the sum in Hexthorpe

Hexthorpe is the only active selective licensing scheme in Doncaster. It was designated on 15 November 2021, became operational on 1 March 2022, and runs for five years to 1 March 2027. If the property is inside the boundary, it needs a licence, and the address decides that, not the size of the house or who lives in it.

The fee is £600 in total for the five year designation, made up of a £200 application fee and a £400 compliance monitoring fee, with a £50 discount for members of a recognised landlord association. Spread across five years that is a modest annual number, but it is not the whole cost. Licence conditions bring compliance work with them, and letting an unlicensed property carries a penalty of up to £30,000, or prosecution and an unlimited fine, plus a possible rent repayment order of up to twelve months' rent. Check the boundary on the council's Hexthorpe selective licensing page against the actual address before you commit to a purchase, not after.

The Edlington scheme ended on 6 February 2023 and no licence is required there now. Anything else you hear about is a proposal or a misunderstanding until the council says otherwise.

Comparing areas without a spreadsheet full of averages

When landlords compare parts of Doncaster, they usually compare headline yields. That comparison is close to meaningless, because the differences that matter do not appear in the headline number.

Weigh these instead. What does the local tenant demand actually look like at the rent you would need, judged from properties currently advertised and how long they sit. What is the building stock, and what does it imply for repairs and for the EPC work. Is the property leasehold. Does licensing apply. How far is it from you, or from whoever will be attending when the boiler fails on a Friday. What did comparable properties actually sell for, rather than what they were listed at.

A higher gross yield very often comes attached to a higher management burden. Cheaper stock tends to need more maintenance, attract more turnover, and produce more arrears work. Plenty of landlords do well from that stock deliberately. It does mean the extra yield is partly payment for extra work, and if an agent absorbs that work then the cost belongs in your net figure. Our property management in Doncaster is charged as one all-in fee with no setup, renewal, inspection or admin fees, which at least makes it a single line in your calculation rather than a moving target.

Build your own figures from real local evidence

Use current advertised rents for properties genuinely comparable to yours, on the same sort of street, in the same condition, at the same size. Then use actual recorded sale prices rather than asking prices. A rental yield Doncaster average, taken across a whole borough, is not evidence about one house.

Then run it properly. If the numbers only work when you assume no voids, no repairs and a straight run to 2030 without EPC spend, you have not tested the purchase, you have described a best case. Sourcing is largely this exercise repeated, which is what our property sourcing service in Doncaster does before a property goes in front of anyone.

Where we come into it

We manage lettings across Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield and Barnsley, so we see what actually lets, at what rent, and how long it takes. If you want a view on what a specific property is likely to achieve before you offer on it, ring the office on 01302 244104 and ask. It is a more useful conversation than a percentage.

If you are buying or selling as part of the same decision, our property sales in Doncaster sits alongside the lettings side, and the practical sequence for getting a property let and compliant is set out in our guide to letting a property in Doncaster. No figure any of us produces is a forecast of what you will earn. It is a calculation, and it is only as good as the evidence you put into it.