These statistics are compiled using data collected as part of the statutory land registration process. The data is extracted based on the date that the application for registration is received by Registers of Scotland (RoS), rather than on the date of entry contained within the application. This data is comprehensive, covering transactions across the whole of Scotland for all types of property sales, in residential and non-residential markets, using actual sale prices.
Our data is subject to a quality assurance process, which aims to
- exclude sales that are not market value sales, for example transfers of ownership between family members and sales of a share of a property (e.g. one-half or one-third); council Right-to-Buy sales and shared ownership sales are difficult to identify but, where identified, they are excluded as a potential sale of less than market value.
- include only single residential dwellings; it will therefore exclude farmhouses with farmland attached (these are designated as “agriculture” and will be included in the non-residential section), estates with multiple properties / outbuildings and residential properties with a non-residential use, e.g. properties open to the public (these are designated as “commercial” and will be included in the non-residential section).
More information about the data and how these statistics are compiled is available in the background and contact information section.
Following the introduction of median house prices to last year’s report and online data tables, this year’s report uses medians as the primary measure for average house price to replace the arithmetic mean (which excluded sales below £20,000 and above £1 million). The arithmetic mean calculation is sensitive to outliers therefore the small number of sales with a very high price tend to make the average higher than what might be thought of as a "typical" house price.
The median on the other hand is more stable, in the sense that it is less influenced by outliers. The median house price provides a better indication of the "typical" house price as it divides sales into two equal groups, half with a house price above the median, and half with a price below the median. The median can easily be extended to deciles and quartiles to enable analysis of the spread of prices across the years.
RoS also publishes data for the Scottish component of the UK House Price Index (UK HPI). Please note that the statistics presented here are distinct from the UK HPI with differences in methodologies including date range of extraction, price range and type of average used. While the trends are broadly similar, the resulting average residential house price figures reflect the different methodologies usedi.
The data tables used in this report are available to download. As noted, these tables use means as the primary measure for average house price. Data relating to arithmetic means is still available in our monthly, quarterly and calendar year statistics which can be accessed here.
Further information about RoS data and statistics is available on our website.
Contact information can be found here. This section gives an overview of residential property sales across Scotland.
See our data tables for all data from 2003-04 and Tableau dashboard for more charts and visualisations of the data.