Three key figures for December 2021:
- £180,485
The average price of a property in Scotland - 11.2%
The annual price change of a property in Scotland - -1.8%
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 December 2021 reflects transactions that took place up to the end of December.
The latest provisional statistics from the UK HPI shows that the average price of a property in Scotland in December 2021 was £180,485, an increase of 11.2% on December 2020. Comparing with the previous month, house prices in Scotland decreased by 1.8% between November 2021 and December 2021.
The UK average house price was £274,712, which was an increase of 10.8% on December 2020 and a increase of 0.8% on the previous month.
The volume of residential sales in Scotland in October 2021 was 10,228, an decrease of 16.2% on the original provisional estimate for October 2020 and an increase of 8.2% on October 2019.
This compares with decreases of 66.0% in England and 45.7% in Wales to October 2021, whilst sales volumes increased 62.6% in Northern Ireland analysing Quarter 3 2021, relative to the same quarter in the previous year.
Commenting on the house price figures in Scotland, Business Development Director Kenny Crawford said:
“The average price of a property in Scotland in December was £180,485, slightly lower than £183,876 reported in November 2021 which was the highest reported for any month since January 2004, from when Scottish data for the UK HPI was first available.
“Over the year as a whole, from November 2020 to the end of October 2021, the number of transactions has picked up following the reductions caused by COVID-19 measures and cumulatively is now 67% higher than the previous year. Figures in the current year to date are also 15.5% higher than pre-COVID-19 figures from November 2018 to October 2019.”
In Scotland, Detached properties showed the biggest increase out of all property types, rising by 16.7% in the year to December 2021 to £330,461. Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 5.9% in the year to December 2021 to £122,189.
Average price increases were recorded in all 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year. The largest increase was in Fife where the average price increased by 16.0% to £166,836. The smallest increase was recorded in City of Aberdeen, where the average price increased by 3.5% to £148,251.
In December 2021, the highest-priced area to purchase a property was City of Edinburgh, where the average price was £312,459. In contrast, the lowest-priced area to purchase a property was East Ayrshire, where the average price was £121,488.
For 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 has been particularly important since March 2020, as measures to counter COVID-19 has affected the volume of transactions within the market, making trends between months and between years more volatile than usual and will continue to be important over the coming months as the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on the housing market and the economy continues to be felt.
Notes to editors
- 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.
- For the publication schedule for the UK HPI see the calendar of release dates.
- The statistics have been produced in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The UK HPI 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.
- Registers of Scotland provides data on residential property sales for the Scotland element of the UK HPI. 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.
- 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.
- Information on individual property purchase prices is available for free from our ScotLIS service.
- Join our mailing list for our data stats alert service.
Footnotes
- All average prices reported from the UK HPI are geometric means, which will typically be closer to the median than the arithmetic mean.↩
- 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 October 2021 because November 2021 and December 2021 figures are likely to change when more recent sales applications data are received.↩
- Comparison between the latest provisional estimate for October 2021 with the original provisional estimate for October 2020 as recorded before final figures available. The final revised volume of sales in October 2020 was 12,974 an annual decrease of 21.0 % in October 2021. However, the sales volume for October 2021 is still subject to revision.↩
- The sales volume in October 2021 was an increase of 8.2 per cent on the provisional estimate and 10.6 per cent on the final figure for sales in October 2019. ↩
- England volume figures are likely to be less complete for this period. ↩
- Both Orkney Islands and Na h-Eileanan Siar increased by 16.8%. Local authority areas where sales volumes within the 12 months to October 2021 represent less than 1.0 % of all Scotland sales volume, are excluded from the figures used for highlighting purposes due to the volatility of the market in these areas..↩