Property market report 2021-22

Published: 28 June 2022

A long-term statistical review of the Scottish property market.

Documents

Property market report 2021-22 (full) - (1.1 MB)
Data tables - Property market report 2021-22 - (405.7 KB)
Infographic - Property market report 2021-22 - (494.3 KB)

Main findings

Introduction

Below are the main findings of the Property market report 2021-22.

The following are available from the documents section:

  • full property market report
  • 2021-22 data tables
  • infographic summary

Visualisations of the data are also available.

Fewer transactions were received by Registers of Scotland (RoS) in the first quarter of 2020-21 because of the introduction of government measures to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19. Use caution when comparing 2020-21 with 2021-22 and with previous periods.

Residential market, sales from £20,000 to £1 million

In 2021-22:

  • the total number of residential property sales registered with RoS was 110,248, an increase of 16% when compared with 2020-21, and a decrease of 26% when compared with the peak year of 2006-07 (149,943 sales)
  • the average price of a residential property in Scotland was £201,744, the highest average price across all the years of this report between 2003-04 and 2021-22, and an increase of 4.0% when compared with the 2020-21 average price of £194,060
  • the total value of the residential sales market in Scotland was £22.2 billion, an increase of 20% when compared with 2020-21

House type and price band

In 2021-22:

  • flats showed the largest volume of residential sales of all house types, with 43,719 sales
  • detached properties had the highest average price of all house types, £307,758, and the largest share of the residential sales market, 29%, with a sales value of £5.2 billion
  • flats had the second largest share in terms of market value, with a market value of £5.0 billion and a 28% share
  • 74% of residential sales had a price between £20,000 and £250,000

New build residential market

In 2021-22:

  • there were 11,586 new build residential property sales in Scotland, 28% more than in 2020-21
  • 11% of the 110,248 residential property sales in Scotland were new builds
  • the average price for a new build residential property in Scotland was £285,187, a 6.4% increase when compared with the previous year, when the average price was £268,064; in the last 10 years the average price for a new build residential property has increased by 36% compared with 31% for all residential properties
  • the value of the new build residential property market in Scotland in 2021-22 was £3.3 billion

High value residential market, sale price of more than £1 million

In 2021-22:

  • there were 392 high value sales in Scotland, an increase of 54% when compared with 2020-21
  • high value residential sales accounted for 0.4% of all residential property sales in Scotland
  • the average price of a property sold for over £1 million was £1.4 million, almost the same as 2020-21
  • the market value of the over £1 million market was £552.8 million, a new high from the previous peak of £371.0 million in 2019-20 and an increase of 55% when compared with 2020-21

City residential market

In 2021-22:

  • 28% of all residential properties sold in Scotland were located within one of Scotland’s seven cities
  • the average price paid for a residential property in one of Scotland’s cities was £212,152, 5.2% higher than the Scotland average price
  • the market value for residential sales in all seven cities was £6.5 billion, compared with £22.2 billion across the whole of Scotland; the market value for residential sales in all 7 cities has increased by 25% when compared with 2020-21, with an increase of 20% for the whole of Scotland

Mortgage market

In 2021-22:

  • 74,631 residential sales were registered with a mortgage, 68% of the residential market
  • 35,617 cash sales were registered, 32% of the residential market, the highest volume recorded in the time series
  • the volume of all mortgage securities registered by RoS across all property types, including both mortgage sales and remortgage/additional borrowing, was 119,522, an increase of 15% from 104,303 mortgage securities in 2020-21

Non-residential overview

In 2021-22 non-residential sales had a total market value of £4.3 billion; of this total:

  • 77% were commercial sales
  • 12% related to sales of land
  • 7% were agricultural sales
  • 4% were forestry sales

In this period there were

  • 4,377 commercial sales, an increase of 26% from the previous year
  • 669 commercial leases, an increase of 52% from the previous year

Residential property sales by urban rural classification

In 2021-22:

  • 84% of residential property sales in Scotland were in urban areas and 16% in rural areas
  • the average price in urban areas of Scotland was £176,172 compared with £228,899 in rural areas

For the last two years combined, 2020-22:

  • City of Edinburgh had the highest average price in urban areas of Scotland at £291,480 and Inverclyde had the lowest at £126,817
  • East Lothian had the highest average price in rural areas at £327,969 and Na h-Eileanan Siar had the lowest at £147,844
  • Local Authority analysis uses two financial years of residential sales combined.

Back to top

Footnotes

  1. The analysis of the volume of residential sales by house type is based on figures where unassigned sales have been allocated to house types using historic data.
  2. Local Authority analysis uses two financial years of residential sales combined.