January house prices back close to November peak

The average price of a Scotland in January 2022 was 10.8% higher than in January 2021, and 2.2% up on December 2021, according to the latest provisional statistics from the UK House Price Index reported by Registers of Scotland.

At £182,786, the Scottish average was just below the all time peak of £183,204 recorded in November 2021. The UK average house price was £273,762, an increase of 9.6% on January 2022 and of 0.4% on the previous month.

Average price increases year on year were recorded in all 32 local authority areas. The largest mainland increase was in West Lothian (17.2%), followed by Fife (16.8%) and Highland and East Ayrshire (both 15.5%). The smallest increase was recorded in City of Aberdeen (0.4%), followed by West Dunbartonshire (6.4%) and Falkirk (6.6%).

Detached properties continued to show the biggest increase out of all property types, rising by 14.9% in the year to January 2022 to £329,106. Flats showed the smallest increase, rising by 7.3% to £126,026.

Initial provisional figures also show the volume of residential sales in Scotland in November 2021 at 9,457, a decrease of 20.1% on the original provisional estimate for November 2020 but 4.0% higher than the figure for November 2019. This compares with decreases of 50.4% in England and 35.3% in Wales.

Registers of Scotland business development director Kenny Crawford commented: "Over the year as a whole, from December 2020 to the end of November 2021, the number of transactions remains high at 34.7% higher than the previous year, which was affected by COVID-19 measures, and 13.0% higher than the year before (pre-COVID-19) from December 2018 to November 2019."