Scots house prices rising twice as fast as England

SCOTLAND is in the midst of a housing boom with property prices rising nearly twice as fast as in England.

The average price of a home in Scotland in June this year was £151,891, a rise of 1.3 per cent on June the previous year.

The House Price Index (HPI) shows the increase is faster than the UK average, which rose by 0.9 per cent during the same period.

House prices increased in 20 out of 32 Scottish local authority areas in the past year, with the biggest rise in Stirling, where average prices rose by 6.4 per cent to £190,000.

In Edinburgh, prices climbed by 3 per cent to £255,612, and in Glasgow they rose 3.7 per cent to £129,370.

Scotland’s booming property prices are in stark contrast to London, where they fell 2.7 per cent.

However, a home in London still costs three times more than one in Scotland, with buyers paying £457,000 on average.

Edwina de Klee, partner at Edinburgh-based Garrington Property Finders, said: ‘Scotland’s property market remains in a league of its own compared to the market south of the Border.

‘At 1.3 per cent, the average rise in the value of Scottish homes during the 12 months to June is nearly double the 0.7 per cent gain posted by the average home in England.’

However, she said Scotland’s momentum ‘is easing off’, and prices didn’t rise everywhere north of the Border. The biggest decline was in South Ayrshire, where the average cost of a property fell over the year by 5.3 per cent, to £131,000.

In June 2019, the highest-priced area to purchase a property in Scotland was Edinburgh, where the average price was £263,233.

The lowest-priced area was East Ayrshire, at £94,765.

First-time buyers in Scotland paid £124,127 on average, whereas in London they paid £405,419, twice the rate of the rest of England, where the figure was £206,062.

The average UK house price was £230,000 in June, about £2,000 more than a year ago.

Kenny Crawford, of Registers of Scotland, said: ‘Average house prices in Scotland have been growing faster than the UK annual rate since March 2019 and in all but two months since December 2017.’

‘In a league of its own’