House prices on the rise

Boost for region

North Lanarkshire’s property market has been given a welcome boost as it was revealed the average house price rose by nearly seven per cent over the last year.

The latest available figures, for December 2017, show that the value of the average house has gone up from £98,948 to £105.630.

That is a rise of 6.8 per cent in the government statistics released by Registers of Scotland as part of their involvement in the new UK House Price Index, which is published every month.

The property market in neighbouring South Lanarkshire also received a boost, with the average house price rising by 8.1 per cent from £116,827 to £126,305.

Across Scotland as a whole, the average property was worth £ 148,743 – up 7.7 per cent from last year’s figure of £138,206.

The latest monthly report shows there were over 1000 sales in Lanarkshire – 568 in North Lanarkshire ( up 18.6 per cent from 479) and another 581 sales in South Lanarkshire (up 2.7 per cent from 566 in the same month last year).

There were 8831 sales across Scotland, up 3.9 per cent from 8503.

Registers of Scotland business development and information director Kenny Crawford said: “Average prices in Scotland continued their upward trend in December with an increase of 7.7 per cent when compared to December 2016.

“Average prices have been steadily increasing each month since March 2016, when compared with the same month of the previous year.”