UK House Price Index figures for May 2022

Three key figures for May 2022

• £187,517
  The average price of a property in Scotland
• 11.2%
  The annual price change of a property in Scotland
• 1.1%
  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 May 2022 reflects transactions that took place up to the end of May.

The latest provisional statistics from the UK HPI show that the average price of a property in Scotland in May 2022 was £187,517, an increase of 11.2 per cent on May 2021.

Comparing with the previous month, house prices in Scotland increased by 1.1% between April 2022 and May 2022.

The UK average house price was £283,496, which was an increase of 12.8 per cent on May 2021 and an increase of 1.2 per cent on the previous month.

The volume of residential sales in Scotland in March 2022 was 8,041, a decrease of 32.8 per cent on the original provisional estimate for March 2021 and an increase of 34.0 per cent on March 2020. However, note that volumes in March 2021 will have been affected by the temporary increase of the nil band of the Land and Building Transaction Tax (LBTT) coming to an end on 31 March 2021. This compares with decreases of 44.4 per cent in England and 26.0 per cent in Wales to March 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 April 2021 to the end of March 2022, the number of transactions remained high, 11.7 per cent higher than the previous year, which was affected by COVID-19 measures, including the temporary increase of the zero rate band of Land and Building Transaction Tax, and 6.4 per cent higher than the year before (pre-COVID) from April 2019 to March 2020.”

In Scotland, detached properties showed the biggest increase out of all property types, rising by 13.6 per cent in the year to May 2022 to £331,996. Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 8.2 per cent in the year to May 2022 to £129,097.

Average price increases were recorded in 31 out of 32 local authorities, when comparing prices with the previous year. The largest increase was in Argyll and Bute where the average price increased by 18.7 per cent to £185,359. The only decrease was recorded in Inverclyde, where the average price decreased by 0.1 per cent to £112,837.

In May 2022, the highest-priced area to purchase a property was City of Edinburgh, where the average price was £321,679. In contrast, the lowest-priced area to purchase a property was Inverclyde, where the average price was £112,837.

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. Figures quoted in this release are not subject to seasonal adjustment. With seasonal adjustment, the increase in house prices was 0.6%.↩
3. 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 March 2022 because April 2022 and May 2022 figures are likely to change when more recent sales applications data are received.↩
4. Comparison between the latest provisional estimate for March 2022 with the original provisional estimate for March 2021 and March 2020 as recorded before final figures available. The final revised volume of sales in March 2021 was 12.248 an annual decrease of 34.3 per cent in March 2022. However, the sales volume for March 2022 is still subject to revision. ↩
5. The sales volume in March 2022 was an increase of 24.7 per cent on the final figure for sales in March 2020 (6,447 sales) and a decrease of 34.3 per cent on the final figure for March 2021 (12,248 sales). ↩
6. England volume figures are likely to be less complete for this period. ↩
7. Na h-Eileanan Siar increased by 24.6 per cent. Local authority areas where sales volumes within the 12 months to March 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. ↩