Scottish Property Market Sales Hit All-Time High of £18.2 Billion

The Scottish residential property markets hit an 11-year high in the 2018-19 financial year, with sales worth as much as £18.2 billion, according to recent data from non-ministerial government department,  Registers of Scotland (RoS).

Scottish property sales were estimated to be 1.6 per cent higher than they were in the 2017-18 financial year, and up 67 per cent on 2009-10.

However, sales remained 21 per cent below the pre-crisis peak of £23.1 billion, recorded in the 2007-08 financial year, according to RoS.

The RoS report came after Scottish housing site s1homes reported that sellers in the Scottish housing market were able to sell their homes at a premium of up to £4,000 more than their original asking prices.

Scottish home prices grow

The average Scottish home was worth £178,991 in 2018-19, marking an increase of 2.2 per cent since the previous financial year, RoS estimated. The department, which has been keeping records of Scottish house price data since 2004, said prices were now 77 per cent higher than they were 15 years ago.

The volume of Scottish residential property sales was estimated to have grown by 44 per cent since 2011-12, with 101,628 homes changing hands in 2018-19 alone. Despite this growth, volumes remained below their 2006-07 peak, when 150,455 sales occurred, RoS reported.

New builds increasingly sold

New builds took a greater share of total properties sold in Scotland at a rate of 12 per cent of total properties sold. This marked the highest proportion of new builds sold since 2008-09, according to the RoS.

The RoS also noted that 181 Scottish properties were sold in 2018-19 for more than £1 million each. Two thirds of these high-value homes were found in the City of Edinburgh.

Janet Edgell, accountable officer at RoS, commented: “The Scottish property market is a significant component of the Scottish economy. In 2018-19, the total value of residential sales continued to rise, largely due to average prices continuing to increase, while the volume of sales has levelled off in recent years.”