House price index shows four per cent annual increase in average prices in Scotland

The latest publication of the UK House Price Index (UK HPI) shows that the average price of a property in Scotland in October 2016 was £143,131 – an increase of four per cent on the previous year and an increase of one per cent when compared to the previous month. This compares to a UK average of £216,674, which was an increase of 6.9 per cent over the year and an increase of 0.1 per cent when compared to the previous month.

Registers of Scotland director of commercial services Kenny Crawford said: “The average price of a residential property in Scotland continues to show steady growth, with month-on-month increases in every month this year apart from February and August. This is a significant change from last year when there were decreases month-on-month in six out of the 12 months.

“Average prices have been steadily increasing on a year-on-year basis, too, with only one drop in average price being recorded in the past three years. This was in March of this year.

“The volume of residential sales in Scotland in August 2016 was 8,468 – a decrease of 2.8 per cent on the previous year and down seven per cent on last month. This compares with annual decreases in sales volumes of 20.3 per cent in England, 11.6 per cent in Wales and 10.7 per cent in Northern Ireland.”

The top five local authorities in terms of sales volumes were Glasgow City (1,031 sales – this is only the third time in the past 12 months that Glasgow City has overtaken the City of Edinburgh as the top local authority in terms of volumes), City of Edinburgh (1,020 sales), Fife (564 sales), South Lanarkshire (520 sales) and North Lanarkshire (415 sales).

The biggest price increase over the last year was in East Renfrewshire where the average price increased by 17.7 per cent to £222,523. The biggest decrease was again in the City of Aberdeen, where prices fell by 8.7 per cent to £172,870.

Across Scotland, all property types showed an increase in average price when compared with the previous year, with detached properties showing the biggest increase of 7.1 per cent to £251,709.

The average price for a property purchased by a former owner occupier was £172,444 – an increase of 5.2 per cent on the previous year. The average price for property purchased by a first time buyer was £114,992 – an increase of 2.6 per cent on the previous year.

The average price for a cash sale was £131,584 – an increase of 3.5 per cent on the previous year – while the average price for property purchased with a mortgage was £148,481 – an increase of 4.2 per cent on the previous year.