Country of origin report news release March 2023

Registers of Scotland (RoS) has published our Country of origin report, which presents statistics on land and property owners and tenants in Scotland by location of owner address at time of purchase.

The statistics are based on Land Register land and property titles in Scotland (1.9 million titles) as at 31 December 2023, where the registered legal owner has provided an address at the time of the registration that is able to be classified to a geographic location. Please note that the owner’s address may have subsequently changed, and the figures are a snapshot or stock picture of all titles at a point in time, rather than a flow of purchases over the last year. A reference to “outwith UK” means those titles where the owner’s address, as supplied at the time of registration, was not located in the UK and to “UK ownership outwith Scotland” means those titles where the owner address supplied at time of registration is in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Location of owner address

• 93.3% Scotland; 5.1% UK outwith Scotland; 1.4% outwith UK, 0.2% Government and Crown.

Owner addresses outwith UK

Of the 27,724 titles in Scotland for which the owner had an address outwith the UK (this category includes both UK overseas territories and Crown Dependencies):

• 84.6% were individuals, 10.9% were companies, 2.8% were trustees or limited partnerships and 1.7% had a combination of owner types.
• Owners had addresses from 169 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.
• Half (51%) of all titles owned or leased by companies from outwith the UK were accounted for by three Crown dependencies and overseas territories: Jersey, Isle of Man and Guernsey.
• Ownership was the predominant interest for titles with an outwith UK owner address, accounting for 92.5% of titles (25,645 titles). The remaining 7.4% (2,061 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 18.5% and 13.6% of outwith UK titles respectively.
• Renfrewshire was the third most popular area, with around 8.5% 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 not repeated in any other local authority.
• The majority (80%) of titles in Scotland with an owner address outwith the UK were classed as being in urban areas of Scotland.
• Outwith UK titles represented 3.5% of Scotland’s land area.

UK owner addresses outwith Scotland

There were 98,341 titles where the owner’s address at time of registration was in England (93,053 titles), Wales (1,852 titles) or Northern Ireland (3,436 titles):

• Type of owner: 66.8% individuals, 28.5% companies, 4.7% other.
• 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.
• 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 in which the UK owner addresses outwith Scotland were located were London (25% of titles) and South East England (16% of titles).
• Titles in Scotland with a UK owner address outwith Scotland represented 14.2% of Scotland’s land area.

Owner address in Scotland

• Type of owner: 90% individuals, 5.6% companies, 4.4% other.

Access the reports and datasets

You can access the full ‘Country of Origin 2023’ report and accompanying data tables from Registers of Scotland using the links below.

We also produce the ‘Country of Origin 2023 - Company Report’. This is a subset of data which contains Land Register information about all properties owned or leased in Scotland by companies outwith UK. This report is now available free of charge under licence agreement.

• Country  of Origin - Full report
• Data tables
• Country of  Origin - Company report

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 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 & Property Services Northern Ireland.
• The most recent RoS long term property market report was published in June 2023, 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

1. The report does not include titles in the General Register of Sasines↩
2. For the purposes of this report references to "owner" also relates to tenants under a long term commercial lease unless otherwise specified ↩
3. The address used is as given by the owner at the time of registration, but it is possible that the owner has subsequently moved. ↩
4. A small proportion of titles will have been associated with more than one country where the title is shared by more than one owner/tenant with addresses in different countries. In these cases, only the first address detailed on the title has been used in these statistics.↩