December house prices show strong annual growth

House prices in Scotland took a dip in December, but were still 8.4% higher on average than in December 2019, according to the latest provisional figures.

The UK House Price Index data, released by Registers of Scotland, show an average December price of £162,983, down 1.2% on the November figure of £163,703, but 8.4% up on the December 2019 figure of £151,603.

Across the UK, prices were up by 1.2% on November to an average of £251,500, and up by 8.5% compared with December 2019.

Year on year, average prices rose in 29 of Scotland's 32 local authority areas. The largest mainland increase was in East Ayrshire, where the average price increased by 17.9% to £111,306 (Shetland recorded an average 19.9% rise), followed by South Ayrshire (13.9%) and East Renfrewshire (12.5%). The largest decrease was recorded in Aberdeen City, where the average price fell by 2.1 per cent to £142,631; Orkney and the Western Isles both recorded falls of less than 1%.

The new data also show a provisional volume of residential sales in Scotland in October 2020 of 12,205, an increase of 31.9% on the initial figure for October 2019 – a marked contrast with an increase of just 0.9% per cent in England and a decrease of 4.2% in Wales. Northern Ireland saw a 22.9% increase during quarter 4 of 2020.

Accountable officer Janet Egdell commented: "The annual price change of a property in Scotland of 8.4% from December 2019 to December 2020 is the largest increase reported in the UK HPI since March 2015. While this increase may have been influenced by the unusual pattern of transactions resulting from COVID-19 restrictions, we will track to see whether this is a trend that continues in the coming months.

"The volume of transactions in October 2020 was high, catching up on some of the reduction in activity in the market in the previous months. However, the overall sales volumes in the year to October 2020 were significantly lower than in the previous 12 month period, reducing by 20.2%  over the year."

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