A new report has revealed Liverpool is the place to buy for landlords – but anyone looking to add to their portfolio should act quickly, as property prices are on the up faster there than in other locations.

The report (commissioned by London’s Beauchamp Estates and Liverpool’s Logic Estates, with analysis by Dataloft) describes the city as a ‘regional powerhouse’, stating residential property prices have risen more quickly than anywhere else in the last five years – including the capital.

But this surge shouldn’t deter potential investors, because prices there are still affordable compared to other key locations. The report looks at the Liverpool Waterfront, where an average-priced apartment would cost just under £240 per square foot. This compares to around £353 (per square foot) for a similarly well-positioned property down the road in Manchester and £678 (per square foot) in London.

Buy-to-let landlords are also collecting higher rental yields – with an average of 6.4% across all apartments in Liverpool, compared to 5.5% in Manchester and 4.5% in London (of the cities included in the survey, only Leeds saw a higher rental yield for all apartments, sitting at 6.7%).

And there are also seemingly more renters to attract – 55% of the city’s population live in private rented accommodation, compared to 27% in the capital and 17% across England as a whole.

However, while this report extols the virtues of buying in Liverpool, it’s worth noting that there are multiple favourable locations which have emerged as key investment hotspots in recent reports.

The Buy To Let City Tracker research undertaken by Aldermore Bank saw Bristol top the list of best places to purchase an investment property, based on indicators including average total rent, short and long-term returns, percentage of vacant housing stock, and number of renters.

Second place was Oxford, with Cambridge coming third, followed by Manchester and Luton to complete the top five.

And in a third piece of research – this time conducted by Compare the Market – Birmingham topped a list of the 20 best places to be a landlord in the UK, with Bradford, Coventry, Bolton and Burnley also making it into the top five.