Registers of Scotland are making some improvements to the monthly house price statistics, so they are more accessible.

On the first working day of each month Registers of Scotland (RoS) publish house price statistics. These include monthly, quarterly, and calendar year data with a range of characteristic and geographic breakdowns, for example by house type and by local authority.

From September, we are going to make some improvements to the publication to make it more accessible. These changes are detailed below.

Using the median as the primary measure

We recently published a blog about why the median is the preferred measure for house price statistics.

In 2023/24 we changed the analysis in our annual Property Market Report to still include medians but no longer show means. Going forward, we will be aligning our monthly house price statistics publication to this approach.

The median is less affected by extreme values than the mean and therefore provides a better indication of the price paid for a "typical" property. For this reason, RoS uses the median as the primary measure in its house price statistics.

Alongside the median, we are also going to publish the lower and upper quartiles in each table. More information on what the quartiles are is included in the blog about medians.

Inclusion of small area statistics

Since 2024 we have published a second annual publication in February which contains house price statistics for small areas. These small areas include local authorities, and more granular geographic breakdowns of Scotland, for example health board. From September onwards, however, we will be incorporating these into the monthly house price statistics. These breakdowns will still be published for the calendar year but will now be revised monthly.

The small area statistics that have not previously been included in the house price statistics and will be added going forwards are:

• Health board
• Electoral ward
• Data zone
• Intermediate data zone
• Scottish parliamentary constituency

Additional updates

We are also taking this opportunity to refresh the format of the tables, including refreshed index and metadata sheets to make finding and using the data you want easier.

We are also including an additional breakdown by 2-fold Urban Rural Classification (previously only 3, 6, and 8-fold were included).

As discussed above, the upper and lower quartiles will be included in all tables, therefore the specific quartile tables will be removed from the publication going forward.

Feedback

We welcome any feedback users have on these changes, and on our statistics more generally, to help ensure they continue to provide valuable insights for users. Please get in touch with the RoS Statistics team by emailing statistics@ros.gov.uk.