February house prices pause, but keep up annual rise

The average price of a property in Scotland in February 2022 was £180,822, down 1.7% on January but 11.7% higher than in February 2021, according to the latest provisional statistics from the UK House Price Index issued by Registers of Scotland. 

The UK average was £276,755, up by 10.9 % on February 2021 and by 0.5% on the previous month.

Average price increases, when compared with the previous year, were recorded in all local authority areas except Shetland, which showed a 1.6% decline. However figures for the island areas are more volatile owing to the low number of transactions: Orkney and Na h-Eileanan Siar both saw year-on-year rises above 20%. The largest mainland increase (20.1%) was in East Ayrshire, followed by  South Ayrshire (16.9%) and Fife (15.8%). The smallest 12-month increase (0.6%) was recorded in City of Aberdeen, followed by Moray (4.7%) and Angus (4.9%).

Detached properties continued to perform most strongly, rising by 15.3% in the year to February 2022 to an average £327,827. Flatted properties showed the smallest increase, rising by 9.6% over the year to £124,587.

First provisional figures show the volume of residential sales in Scotland in December 2021 as 8,814, a decrease of 18.1% on the original provisional estimate for December 2020 but an increase of 10.4% on December 2019. This compares with decreases of 52.5% in England and 47.3% in Wales to December 2021.

Commenting on the Scottish figures, Registers of Scotland business development director Kenny Crawford said: "The average price of a property in Scotland in February 2022 was £180,822, slightly lower than peak reported in January 2022 which, at £183,908, was the highest reported for any month since January 2004, from when Scottish data for the UK HPI was first available.

"Over the year as a whole, from January 2021 to the end of December 2021, the number of transactions remained high at 27.6% higher than the previous year which was affected by COVID-19 measures, and 10.3% higher than the year before (pre-COVID) from January 2019 to December 2019."