Andrew Diamond

Market experts at the firm say a more stable market during the past 12 months has been to the benefit of buyers and sellers following years of extreme highs and lows in both prices and trading conditions.

And, should interest rates fall as predicted during the next year, they expect that steady trading position to continue.

Lindsays sold homes valued at a total of £194.8m through its teams in Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth during 2024 – a 14 per cent rise on 2023 – and have predicted that they will break through the £200m barrier in 2025.

Maurice Allan, managing director of Lindsays’ residential property team, said: “The signs are pointing to steady growth in the market over the course of 2025. There will be a good volume of properties on the market. As a firm, we certainly expect to sell in excess of £200m-worth of homes during this year.”

After a challenging 2023 for the entire market, Lindsays say the past year was the first since before the coronavirus pandemic where there was a full 12 months without extremes, whether they be the highs in prices that seen following lockdown or the lows that followed the spike in interest rates after the Liz Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng budget of 2022.

“We are now operating in a more predictable, tradable market - which is better for having those real highs and lows removed from it. You can far better predict where offers should be pitched. A settled market is a good market.,” Mr Allan added.

“That has allowed more and more people to move back to the traditional pattern of selling their current home before placing offers to buy their next one, which is putting them in a far stronger position as bidders.”

Of the properties sold by Lindsays, £115.2-worth of them were through its Edinburgh team, £69.4 were in Dundee and £10.1m in Perth.

While the Bank of England held interest rates at 4.75 per cent last month (December), analysts are forecasting reductions in the base rate of interest over the course of this year.

Andrew Diamond, partner and head of residential property at Lindsays, said: “The outlook for the market is probably as settled as we have seen it for a number of years.

“We could be looking at a situation where, by this time next year, the base rate of interest is one per cent lower than it is now. Lending is already fairly sensibly priced, but this will make things even more attractive to borrowers.”

The latest House Price Index for Scotland shows the average price of a property in October 2024 was £197,000, an increase of 5.5 per cent compared to October 2023.

The City of Edinburgh was the highest-priced local authority region in which to buy a property, with an average price of £340,000. The lowest-priced areas were Inverclyde and East Ayrshire, where average prices of £133,000 were recorded.