Compared with the previous month, house prices in Scotland increased by 1.7 per cent between July 2021 and August 2021.

The UK average house price was £264,244, which was an increase of 10.6 per cent on August 2020 and an increase of 2.9 per cent on the previous month.

The volume of residential sales in Scotland in July 2021 was 10,763, an increase of 184.1 per cent on the original provisional estimate for June 2020.

This compares with increases of 5.3 per cent in England and 12.5 per cent in Wales to June 2021, whilst sales volumes increased 41.8 per cent in Northern Ireland analysing Quarter 1 – 2021 relative to the same quarter in the previous year.

The volume of sales in June 2020 (both original provisional estimates and the final revised volume figures) is the lowest number of residential sales transactions recorded in the month of June in this time series.

This is due to the introduction of measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus from mid-March 2020 onwards, in which non-essential construction activity stopped, and home buyers were advised to delay moving to a new home where possible, until the lockdown restrictions began to ease towards the end of August 2020.

In Scotland, detached properties showed the largest increase in average house price, rising by 21.3 per cent in the year to August 2021 to £319,985, although this figure may have been affected by the lower than usual numbers of transactions recorded in August 2020. Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 12.6 per cent in the year to August 2021 to £124,949.

Average price increases were recorded in all 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year. The largest increase was in Scottish Borders where the average price increased by 29.4 per cent to £194,509. The smallest increase was recorded in City of Aberdeen, where the average price increased by 7.6 per cent to £150,035.

Kenny Crawford, business development director at ROS, said: “Property prices continued their trend upwards in August. The average price of a property in Scotland was £180,832. This is the highest reported for any month since January 2004, from when Scottish data for the UK HPI was first available.

“Over the year as a whole from July 2020 to the end of June 2021, the number of transactions has picked up following the reductions caused by Covid-19 measures and cumulatively is now 33 per cent higher than the previous year.”