UK House Price Index figures for April 2022

Three key figures for April 2022

• £187,954
  The average price of a property in Scotland
• 16.2%
  The annual price change of a property in Scotland
• 3.0%
  The monthly price change of a property in Scotland

Estimates for the most recent months are provisional and are likely to be updated as more data is included. The house price index for April 2022 reflects transactions that took place up to the end of April.

The latest provisional statistics from the UK HPI show that the average price of a property in Scotland in April 2022 was £187,954, an increase of 16.2 per cent on April 2021.

Comparing with the previous month, house prices in Scotland increased by 3.0% between March 2022 and April 2022.

The UK average house price was £281,161, which was an increase of 12.4 per cent on April 2021 and an increase of 1.1 per cent on the previous month.

The volume of residential sales in Scotland in February 2022 was 6,435, a decrease of 10.6 per cent on the original provisional estimate for February 2021 and an increase of 12.2 per cent on February 2020. This compares with decreases of 31.7 per cent in England and 9.1 per cent in Wales to February 2022, whilst sales volumes decreased by 19.3 per cent in Northern Ireland when analysing Quarter 1 – 2022 relative to the same quarter in the previous year.

Commenting on the house price and volume figures in Scotland, Janet Egdell, Registers of Scotland Accountable Officer said:

“Average prices for property in Scotland keep on rising and have increased in every month since July 2020 when comparing with the previous year. The annual increase has been in excess of five per cent in every month since October 2020. In comparison, in the 12 months to October 2020, the annual increase only exceeded three per cent on one occasion.”

“Over the year as a whole from March 2021 to the end of February 2022, the number of transactions remained high, 23.3 per cent higher than the previous year which was affected by COVID-19 measures, and 8.3 per cent higher than the year before (pre-COVID) from March 2019 to February 2020.”

In Scotland, detached properties showed the biggest increase out of all property types, rising by 22.5 per cent in the year to April 2022 to £346,753. Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 10.4 per cent in the year to April 2022 to £126,446.

Average price increases were recorded in 31 out of 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year The largest increase was in Scottish Borders where the average price increased by 22.9 per cent to £203,485. The smallest increase was recorded in Inverclyde, where the average price increased by 3.6 per cent to £111,462

In April 2022, the highest-priced area to purchase a property was City of Edinburgh, where the average price was £324,947 In contrast, the lowest-priced area to purchase a property was Inverclyde, where the average price was £111,462.

Further information on HPI Scotland by local authority, property type, first time buyers and cash sales can be found in the latest HPI Scotland publication.

As with other indicators in the housing market, which typically fluctuate from month-to-month, it is important not to put too much weight on one month’s set of house price data. This was particularly important in the year from March 2020, as measures to counter COVID-19 affected the volume of transactions within the market, making trends between months and between years more volatile than usual.

Notes to editors

1. Registers of Scotland is the public body responsible for compiling and maintaining registers relating to property and other legal documents in Scotland. Registers of Scotland records and safeguards the rights of the individual while providing open access to information on the registers.
2. For the publication schedule for the UK HPI see the calendar of release dates.
3. The statistics have been produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The UK House Price Index is a joint publication with our publication partners: HM Land Registry for England and Wales, Land & Property Services Northern Ireland and Office for National Statistics. The UK HPI was designated as National Statistics by the Office for Statistics Regulation on 18 September 2018.
4. Registers of Scotland provides data on residential property sales for the Scotland element of the UK House Price Index. Separate HPI releases are also published by HM Land Registry and Land & Property Services Northern Ireland, which focus on the figures for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. The Office for National Statistics also publishes a monthly  HPI statistical bulletin with commentary on the whole of the UK.
5. Details of all of our property statistics releases and future publication dates are available on our website. A comparison guide comparing the different house price index measures that are published in the UK is also available.
6. Information on individual property purchase prices is available for free via our ScotLIS service.
7. Sign up for our data stats alert service.

Footnotes

1. All average prices reported from the UK HPI are geometric means, which will typically be closer to the median than the arithmetic mean.↩
2. Due to there being a period of 2 to 8 weeks between completion and registration of sales, volume figures based on the month of date of entry are presented up to January 2022 because February 2022 and March 2022 figures are likely to change when more recent sales applications data are received.↩
3. Comparison between the latest provisional estimate for February 2022 with the original provisional estimate for February 2021 and February 2020 as recorded before final figures available. The final revised volume of sales in February 2021 was 7,357 an annual decrease of 12.5 per cent in February 2022. However, the sales volume for February 2022 is still subject to revision.↩
4. The sales volume in February 2022 was an increase of 8.4 per cent on the final figure for sales in February 2020 (5,939 sales). ↩
5. England volume figures are likely to be less complete for this period. ↩
6. Orkney Islands and Na h-Eileanan Siar increased by 34.3 per cent and 25.1 per cent. Shetland Islands decreased by 0.6 per cent and was the only local authority with a decrease. Local authority areas where sales volumes within the 12 months to February 2022 represent less than 1.0 per cent of the all Scotland sales volume are excluded from the figures used for highlighting purposes due to the volatility of the market in these areas. ↩