House price changes, Scotland – Place Design Scotland

THE average price of a property in Scotland in April 2020 was £153,281 – an increase of 1.6 per cent on April 2019.

The figure is among the latest provisional statistics from the UK House Price Index (HPI), published by the UK government.

Says the Registers of Scotland, in a media release published on August 19 2020: “This is the first UK HPI release since the March 2020 UK HPI was published on 20 May 2020.

“The UK HPI publication was temporarily suspended because of the size of the reduction in housing transactions due to government measures to reduce the spread of coronavirus.

“As a result, it was not possible to produce a meaningful measure of UK house prices that would be representative of any true transaction activity within the housing market.”

ROS goes on to say: “By the August 2020, UK HPI (to be published on 21 October 2020) the publication schedule will have returned to normal.”

Other findings include:

* The UK average house price was £234,612, which was an increase of 2.6 per cent on April 2019 and a decrease of 0.2 per cent on the previous month.

* The volume of residential sales in Scotland in February 2020 was 5,736, an increase of 6.5 per cent on the original provisional estimate for February 2019. Comparing the provisional volume estimate for February 2019 with the provisional estimate for February 2020, volume transactions increased by 11.1 per cent in Northern Ireland.

* Using HMRC property transaction statistics, the volume of transactions increased by 1.2 per cent in England, 7.6 per cent in Scotland and 1.8 per cent in Wales, in the year to February 2020.

* In Scotland, detached houses showed the largest increase, rising by 4.1 per cent in the year to April 2020 to £268,676.

* Flatted properties showed a decrease, falling by 0.8 per cent in the year to April 2020 to £107,868.

* Average price increases were recorded in the majority (21) of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year. The largest increase was in Dumfries and Galloway, where the average price increased by 10.2 per cent to £136,703.

* The largest decrease was recorded in City of Aberdeen, where the average price fell by 8.1 per cent to £139,796.

* In April 2020, the highest-priced area to purchase a property was City of Edinburgh, where the average price was £281,266.

* By contrast, the lowest-priced area to purchase a property was Inverclyde, where the average price was £93,232.

Pictured: Stevedore Place, Leith, Edinburgh