News Release
We have updated our Land and Property Titles in Scotland by Country of Origin publication.
The publication presents statistics on land and property owners and tenants in Scotland by owner address at the time of purchase.
The statistics are based on Land Register land and property titles in Scotland (1.86 million titles) as at 31 December 2021, where the registered legal owner has provided an address at the time of the registration and that is able to be classified to a geographic location.
Additional analysis on the titles with UK owner address outwith Scotland has been added into this year's report.
Location of owner address
93.1% Scotland; 5.2% in UK outwith Scotland; 1.5% outwith UK
Owner addresses outwith UK
With respect to the 27,635 titles in Scotland for which the owner had an address outwith the UK, including UK overseas territories:
- 84 % were individuals; 11.6% were companies; 2.8 % were trustees or limited partnerships; 1.6% had a combination of owner types
- Owners had addresses from 164 countries and overseas territories around the world, excluding the UK
- More companies purchasing or leasing in Scotland were based in Jersey than anywhere else, while USA was the most common country for individuals
- More than half (60%) 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 owner address, accounting for 90.5% of titles (25,010 titles). The remaining 9.4% (2,608 titles) related to tenancy under long term commercial leases
- City of Edinburgh and Glasgow City were the most popular areas of Scotland for titles with an outwith UK owner address with 18% and 13% outwith UK titles respectively
- Renfrewshire was the third most popular area, with around 10 of outwith UK titles. A contributory factor to this is the number of titles of parking spaces and storage facilities near to Glasgow Airport. This is an unusual occurrence that does not appear to be repeated in any other local authority
- The majority (80%) of titles in Scotland with a owner address outwith the UK were classed as being in urban areas of Scotland
- Experimental statistics show that outwith UK titles represented 3.1% of Scotland’s land area
UK owner addresses outwith Scotland
There were 96,724 titles where the owners address at time of registration was in England (91,083 titles); Wales (1,840 titles); Northern Ireland (3,801 titles). With respect to to the 96,713 titles that were included in this analysis:
- City of Edinburgh and Glasgow City were the most popular areas of Scotland for titles with a UK owner address outwith Scotland with 11% and 10% of titles respectively
- Around two thirds (66%) of titles in Scotland with a UK owner address outwith Scotland were classed as being in urban areas of Scotland
- The most common UK regions with UK owner address outwith Scotland were London (25% of titles); South East England (15% of titles); North West England (11% of titles)
- Experimental statistics show that titles in Scotland with a UK owner address outwith Scotland represented 13.8% of Scotland's land area
The full Land and Property Titles in Scotland by Country of Origin as at 31 December 2021 statistical report can be accessed here.
The Country of Origin Company Report is a dataset containing Land Register information about all properties owned or leased in Scotland by companies outwith UK, was also updated and is available to purchase at £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 and Property Services Northern Ireland.
- The most recent RoS long term property market report was published in June 2021, detailing trends in the land and property market since 2003-04.
- Information on individual property purchase prices is available for free from our ScotLIS service.
- Sign up for our data statistics alert service.
Footnotes
- The report does not include titles in the General Register of Sasines↩
- For the purposes of this report references to "owner" also relates to tenants under a long term commercial lease unless otherwise specified ↩
- A small proportion of titles will have been associated with more than one country where title is shared by more than one owner or tenant with addresses in different countries. In these cases, only the first address detailed on the title has been used used in these statistics ↩
- There were 17 titles that could not be classified to an interest (ownership or tenancy)↩
- Since 31 December 2021,11 titles have been amalgamated or closed and so it was not possible to include them in the location analysis ↩