Your Move and Acadata have reported that annual price growth in Scotland accelerated to 7.3% in February – almost double the next fastest region in Britain and six times the rate for England and Wales as a whole.
While prices for February in England and Wales rose just 0.1% month-on-month, in Scotland they were up 2.3%.
The report said that some of the growth is down to the low transaction numbers typically seen in February, coupled with a relatively small number of high value sales in Edinburgh, pushing monthly price growth to 7.3% in the city, which accounted for over half the monthly increase in Scotland. Nevertheless, the market remains strong with a large majority of local authorities seeing growth in the last year.
Overall, the price in Scotland is up more than £12,000 annually to leave the average property worth £182,936.
Christine Campbell, Your Move managing director in Scotland, said: “Scotland continues to enjoy unexpectedly strong housing growth – with prices rising at their fastest rate in a decade. Both high priced property and the major cities are fuelling a minihousing boom.”
Alan Penman, business development manager for Walker Fraser Steele, a firm of chartered surveyors and part of the LSL group of companies, said: “Scotland’s market grows ever stronger as the rest of the UK weakens. But, while price growth might be returning to the levels of the last housing boom, transactions remain well down. The attractiveness of Scotland’s centres such as Edinburgh is matched only by the tightness of property supply there.”
Monthly house price growth in Scotland is running at its fastest since 2004, barring the month before the introduction of the LBTT in 2015, while annual house price growth is at its fastest since April 2008, at the end of the last housing boom.
Growth in February was boosted by the sale of eight new properties in the Morningside EH10 area of Edinburgh for an average £1.15 million each. Even without this, price growth for February in Scotland would be 2.0%, but growth is heavily dependent on Scotland’s two big cities. Edinburgh accounts for 28% of the increase in prices over the year, and Glasgow another 14%.
There is strength across the market, however, with almost a third of local authorities in Scotland setting a new peak price in February. That includes high priced East Renfrewshire, second only to Edinburgh with monthly growth of 7.1%, and East Dunbartonshire, up a more modest 1.8%; but it also includes mid-priced areas like Angus (up 5.2% in the month), areas such as Falkirk (2.9%) and, cheaper still, North Lanarkshire (2.5%), where average prices at £131,293 are well below the national average.
The broad basis of Scotland’s growth is even clearer looking at annual growth. Only four areas across the country haven’t seen rises in the last year: Stirling (down 3.2%), East Ayrshire (down 1.9%), Aberdeen City (-1.2%) and South Ayrshire (-0.6%). Most often these are the result of higher than normal prices achieved last February and not repeated this year.
By contrast the other 28 areas have seen prices rise, with more than half a dozen seeing double-digit growth: they include, again, the City of Edinburgh (11.4%) and East Renfrewshire (up 15.1% – the highest growth in Scotland with prices increasing £35,740 in the year); but they also include the Scottish Borders (12.6%), Fife (12.6%), Glasgow (10.4%) and Falkirk (13.0%). Wherever you look, the Scottish market remains strong, the report said.