Registers of Scotland has updated its Land and Property Titles in Scotland by Country of Origin publication today.
The publication presents statistics on the country of origin of land and property owners and tenants in Scotland.
The statistics are based on Land Register land and property titles in Scotland as at 31 December 2019, where the registered legal owner (or the tenant under a long term commercial lease) has provided an address at the time of the registration that is able to be classified to a geographic location.
Owner/tenant addresses by country of origin as at 31 December 2019, are shown below:
- 4.3% (74,216 titles) were in England
- 0.1% (1,825 titles) were in Wales
- 0.2% (3,761 titles) were in Northern Ireland
- 1.4% (25,071 titles) were outwith UK
- 94.0% (1.64 million titles) were in Scotland
With respect to the 25,071 titles in Scotland for which the proprietor had an address outwith the UK (including UK overseas territories), 83% were individuals, 13% were companies, 3.3% were trustees or limited partnerships and 1.3% had a combination of proprietor types.
Owners and tenants had addresses from 162 locations around the world, excluding the UK. More companies purchasing or leasing in Scotland came from Isle of Man than anywhere else, while USA was the most common country for individuals.
More than half (62%) of all titles owned or leased by companies from outwith the UK were accounted for by four Crown dependencies and overseas territories: Isle of Man, Jersey, British Virgin Islands and Guernsey.
Ownership was the predominant interest for titles with an outwith UK proprietor address, accounting for 89% (22,237) of titles. The remaining 11%, or 2,721 titles, related to tenancy under long-term commercial leases.
With regard to the absolute number of titles, City of Edinburgh and Glasgow City were the most popular areas of Scotland for titles with an outwith UK proprietor address. Renfrewshire was the third most popular area, with around 12% of outwith UK titles. However, it is likely that some of these holdings may relate to very small parcels of land such as parking spaces and storage facilities near to Glasgow Airport. A large proportion (81%) of the Renfrewshire titles relate to commercial leases. The next most popular areas were Fife (5.5% of outwith UK titles), Aberdeen City (5.0%) and Highland (4.5%).
The majority (81%) of titles in Scotland with a proprietor address outwith the UK were classed as being in urban areas of Scotland. New experimental statistics show that outwith UK titles represented 2.7% of Scotland’s land area.
View the full Land and Property Titles in Scotland by Country of Origin report.
The Country of Origin Company Report – a dataset containing information about all properties owned or leased in Scotland by companies outwith UK – was also updated and available to purchase for a new, reduced fee of £300 (plus VAT).
Notes to Editors
- Registers of Scotland (RoS) is the public body responsible for compiling and maintaining registers relating to property and other legal documents in Scotland. RoS records and safeguards the rights of the individual while providing open access to information on the registers.
- This is an official statistics publication for Scotland. The statistics presented here have been produced in line with the principles set out in the Code of Practice for Statistics.
- RoS began compiling quarterly statistics on the housing market with the completion of the extension of the Land Register to all counties in Scotland in April 2003. RoS also contributes to the UK House Price Index, in partnership with the Office of National Statistics, HM Land Registry and Land & Property Services Northern Ireland.
- The most recent RoS long-term property market report was published in June 2019, detailing trends in the land and property market since 2003-04.
- Information on individual property purchase prices is available for free via our ScotLIS service.
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