I do BTL in the UK. For our market, look at 1% of the mortgage. So, if you put down a 50% deposit on a £150k place, you'd want rent of £750.

Actually, it depends very much on your circumstances, attitude to risk, how much you're happy to pay in agency fees etc.

Also, in the UK, we don't tend to have 30 year mortgages, which makes predicting a stable price very tricky.

The UK also has vastly different tax rates - and a changing rental culture - which may also affect the price you want to charge.

Huh, that seems like an odd rule-of-thumb. That would guide you to put more money into deals with lower absolute returns, which would lead you to really low ROIs. eg, if you were willing to put down 66% on that property (£100k down, £50k mortgaged), then a £500 rent would be ok. Or am I reading that wrong?

I am completely ignorant about UK real estate, so I might be missing something obvious.

It's about the minimum you need in order to cover your costs & start making an ROI. Obviously if you can charge more, you'll start making more.

OK, those numbers are a little more favourable. Good to know if i'm ever in that position again.

To be specific, it's a rule of thumb in the US. I would not be at all surprised if UK real estate works differently. But yeah, in some markets you just won't find things that reach that return. Then you'd have to decide if it's worth buying those properties, or buying in a different market, or just doing something totally different with your money (stocks, bonds, startups, whatever).

It pretty much confirms my suspicions that it's too late to get into RE (here) unless you already have some. (we almost got a place where the numbers worked very well about 8 years ago, but various delays meant we missed out and got married instead...