UK House Price Index figures for February 2022

Three key figures for February 2022:

• £180,822
  The average price of a property in Scotland
• 11.7%
  The annual price change of a property in Scotland
• -1.7%
  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 February 2022 reflects transactions that took place up to the end of February.

The latest provisional statistics from the UK HPI shows that the average price of a property in Scotland in February 2022 was £180,822, an increase of 11.7% on February 2021.

Comparing with the previous month, house prices in Scotland decreased by 1.7% between January 2022 and February 2022.

The UK average house price was £276,755, which was an increase of 10.9 % on February 2022 and a increase of 0.5% on the previous month.

The volume of residential sales in Scotland in December 2021 was 8,814, a decrease of 18.1% on the original provisional estimate for December 2020 and an increase of 10.4% on December 2019.

This compares with decreases of 52.5% in England and 47.3% in Wales to December 2021, whilst sales volumes increased 62.6% in Northern Ireland when 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 February 2022 was £180,822, slightly lower than peak reported in January 2022 which, at £183,908, 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 January 2021 to the end of December 2021, the number of transactions remained high at 27.6% higher than the previous year which was affected by COVID-19 measures and 10.3% higher than the year before (pre-COVID) from January 2019 to December 2019.”

In Scotland, detached properties showed the biggest increase out of all property types, rising by 15.3%  in the year to February 2022 to £327,827.  Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 9.6% in the year to February 2022 to £124,587.

Average price increases were recorded in 31 out of 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year.  The largest increase was in East Ayrshire where the average price increased by 20.1% to £123,942.  The smallest increase was recorded in City of Aberdeen, where the average price increased by 0.6% to £143,591.

The only decrease when comparing prices with the previous year was in Shetland Islands, however this has not been highlighted due to the volatility of the series for this area due to the low numbers of sales transactions recorded.

In February 2022, the highest-priced area to purchase a property was City of Edinburgh, where the average price was £315,070. In contrast, the lowest-priced area to purchase a property was North Ayrshire, where the average price was £119,526.

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.

Notes to editors

1. 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.
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 HPI is a joint publication with our publication partners: HM Land Registry for England and Wales, Land and 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. RoS provides data on residential property sales for the Scotland element of the UK House Price Index (HPI). Separate HPI releases are also published by HM Land Registry and Land and 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 from 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 December 2021 because January 2022 and February 2022 figures are likely to change when more recent sales applications data are received.↩
3. Comparison between the latest provisional estimate for November 2021 with the original provisional estimate for December 2020 and December 2019 as recorded before final figures available. The final revised volume of sales in December 2020 was 11,148 an annual decrease of 20.9% in December 2021. However, the sales volume for December 2021 is still subject to revision.↩
4. The sales volume in December 2021 was a decrease of 9.2 % on the final figure for sales in December 2019 (8,072). ↩
5. England volume figures are likely to be less complete for this period. ↩
6. Na h-Eileanan Siar and Orkney Islands increased by 22.7 per cent and 20.9 per cent.  Shetland Islands decreased by 1.6 per cent. Local authority areas where sales volumes within the 12 months to December 2021 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.↩