Ellesmere Port (CH65) Leads Cheshire West Yields at 7.4%

Yields across 288 postcode areas in Cheshire West and Chester range from 7.4% in Ellesmere Port (CH65) down into the mid-4% range in the district's premium villages. That spread of roughly two to three percentage points is wider than the gap between holiday letting and buy-to-let at the district-wide level, which means WHERE you buy inside Cheshire West matters more than HOW you let it out. This ranking shows which postcode areas lead on gross yield and why the pattern exists the way it does.

The suburb leaderboard below is ranked by buy-to-let (long-term) gross yield for a 3-bed house. The holiday let column shows the same maths applied to nightly rate times occupancy times 330 available nights. Rankings shift if you switch to 2-bed apartments; the dashboard covers every bedroom count and property type.

Ellesmere Port (CH65) Leads on Yield, Reflecting Its Entry Price of £179,344

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

Why the Top Suburbs Lead: Affordability Doing the Heavy Lifting

Ellesmere Port (CH65) tops the ranking because the entry price of £179,344 sits well below the district median of £265,554, while the monthly rent of £1,112 barely trails rents in more expensive postcodes. The Ellesmere Port area draws tenant demand from the Vauxhall manufacturing plant, Stanlow refinery and the logistics corridor along the M53, plus overspill from Liverpool commuters using Merseyrail. None of those demand drivers scale with purchase price the way they do in Chester itself, which is why yields hold up so strongly here. On a holiday-let basis, Ellesmere Port is a weaker proposition, the area lacks the tourism pull of Chester's walls and amphitheatre, so the buy-to-let thesis is the cleaner route.

Chester City Centre (CH1) sits second because Chester's core postcode combines an exceptionally active rental pool, university students, NHS staff at the Countess, professional tenants, with a flat stock mix that keeps median prices at £208,643. Chester city centre is unusual in this ranking because it works on both strategies: the Roman heritage, Grosvenor shopping and racecourse events generate genuine weekend holiday-let demand to complement the year-round buy-to-let market. Winsford/Northwich (CW7) places third on a different logic entirely, Winsford and Northwich are mid-Cheshire commuter towns with strong links to Manchester and Warrington via the West Coast Main Line. The demand here is almost exclusively residential, making this a textbook buy-to-let suburb rather than a holiday pick.

Hooton/Eastham (CH66) and Saltney/Lache (CH4) round out the top five, each pulling in different directions. The Hooton and Eastham belt benefits from Wirral proximity and Liverpool commuter flows, while Saltney and Lache trade on Chester adjacency at a meaningful price discount compared with the CH2 or CH3 postcodes on the English side of the city.

The Yield-Price Trade-Off Is Doing Most of the Work in This Ranking

Cheshire West's yield spread is driven almost entirely by entry price, not by rent divergence. Monthly rents across the top five cluster tightly between £1,085 and £1,170, a spread of only about 8%. Sale prices, by contrast, span from £179,344 up to £242,918 in the top ranks alone, and stretch all the way to £328,013 in the district's most expensive postcodes. When rent is roughly flat but price varies by 35% or more across postcode areas, yield inverts almost mechanically.

An investor entering at £179,344 in Ellesmere Port (CH65) versus £265,554 at the district median faces a very different capital-risk profile. A cheaper purchase reduces absolute capital at risk and improves yield, but it concentrates exposure to a narrower tenant demographic and areas with historically softer capital growth. The district median sits between the yield leaders and the premium villages, and for many investors it represents a compromise rather than a sweet spot.

Premium Postcodes for Context: Amenity Over Income

For context, here is how some of Cheshire West's most in-demand areas compare. These are established postcodes where investors typically accept lower yields in exchange for capital growth, liquidity and tenant quality.

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

These areas yield less on buy-to-let because buyers are paying for amenity, school catchments, period stock, village character and long-term capital growth, rather than for income. Holiday let economics can shift the picture for the genuinely tourist-facing postcodes, the Chester and rural west Cheshire areas with National Trust and Cheshire Peaks proximity can lift the holiday let yield column closer to the top-ranked buy-to-let suburbs. For the commuter villages, holiday let demand is thin and the buy-to-let numbers are the ones that matter.

What the Table Doesn't Show

Gross yield is rent divided by price, and that ratio has two ways of going up. Either rent is unusually strong, or price is unusually weak. In parts of Ellesmere Port and the Winsford fringe, the high yield reflects softer capital values as much as robust rental demand. Investors chasing yield alone can end up in areas where the property is cheap because the area is thin on transactions, lagging on price growth, or concentrated in one employer's catchment. A void period in a thin rental pool can wipe out a year of the yield advantage.

Capital growth is the other omission. Cheshire's premium villages have historically compounded faster than the yield leaders, so total return, income plus appreciation, can tip the other way over a ten-year hold. The table also uses district-level medians, which lag fast-moving postcodes by six to twelve months. And none of these numbers capture finance costs, stamp duty including the 3% additional-property surcharge, or the practical costs of managing a let from a distance. The numbers here are the starting point of the analysis, not the end of it.

View Cheshire West and Chester in the dashboard → Free preview · every bedroom count and property type

Cheshire West's Top Yield Beats the National Average, but Only in the Affordable Belt

Cheshire West's district-median gross yield of 5.1% sits just below the North West regional median of 5.6% and the UK national median of 5.7%. That is not a flattering headline, but it hides a useful nuance: the top-ranked suburb of Ellesmere Port (CH65) delivers 7.4%, comfortably above both regional and national benchmarks, while the premium villages trail well behind. In other words, Cheshire West as a district is average, but within it sits a clearly above-average yield belt that an investor willing to buy outside Chester city can access. This mirrors the story across most of the North West, where headline averages understate the opportunity in specific postcodes. Broader regional dynamics are covered in the market score methodology.

The FHL tax regime was abolished from April 2025, so holiday lets and buy-to-let are now taxed equivalently. Outside Greater London there is no 90-day night cap, though converting to holiday use may require planning permission for change of use. That regulatory backdrop makes the financial comparison between holiday letting and buy-to-let more important than ever, and it makes suburb selection, which drives yield variance, the biggest lever you still control. Data reflects market conditions as of April 2026.

For readers exploring the broader picture, you can explore rental data in the dashboard or review the underlying 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.