Average Scottish house price grows 3% in year to March

Average house prices in Scotland showed an overall 3.0% increase in the year to March 2023, according to the latest provisional statistics from the UK House Price Index released by Registers of Scotland.

The figure of £184,877 was also a 0.7% rise on that recorded for February 2023, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis - seasonally adjusted, there was a decrease of 0.1%.

Across the UK, year-on-year prices increased by an average 4.1% to £285,009, though this was 1.2% down on the February 2023 (0.9% seasonally adjusted).

The biggest 12 month increase in mainland Scotland by local authority area was in East Lothian (8.6%), followed by Perth & Kinross (8.4%) and West Lothian (7.5%). Five areas saw a decrease, the largest being in City of Aberdeen (6.9%), followed by Inverclyde (2.2%) and West Dunbartonshire (1.9%).

Average prices for local authorities are based on a three-month moving average to help remove some of the volatility in the series. 

The new figures also show the volume of residential sales in Scotland in January 2023 as 5,791, down 19.4% on the original provisional estimate for January 2022.

Kenny Crawford, Registers of Scotland business development director, commented: "Scotland's annual house price inflation has generally been slowing since the recent peak of 13.6% in the 12 months to April 2022, and has shown slower growth than the average for the UK since July 2022."