Real price of Scotland’s Escape to the Count ry property boom

Covid has sparked an urban stampede for rural living. Now the sky-high prices in the Highlands and Islands are being blamed for locking locals out of the housing market – and accelerating rural depopulation. But, says a leading island writer, the truth is

Coronavirus has upended everyone in our biggest collective, communal ordeal since the second World War. spoiled most of our plans. Comprehensively ruined the summer.

But it is also making millions reassess their lives – and change them. People do not want to work in offices any more. increasingly they view packed, germy public transport with trepidation.

When rural life has suddenly never seemed so attractive – more space, less travel, larger gardens, small and friendly schools and less-harried doctors – there is a building, headlong rush out of our cities.

and in places such as the Western isles, which since 2000 has struggled to adapt to sustained and well-heeled immigration from the British mainland, that rush now threatens to be a stampede.

on Tuesday there was a firm if courteous call on the authorities to intervene decisively in the Hebridean housing market if the bonds of island community are to survive and living, vernacular Gaelic is to be saved.

Houses going up for sale should first be advertised locally, residents declare, giving local people first refusal – even the local authority the chance of compulsory purchase – as prices otherwise continue to balloon beyond the mortgage reach of local wages and more and more properties become holiday cottages or selfcatering ventures.

only then can an ‘economic Clearance’ be averted. That’s the clarion call from Grimsay scholar and crofter Pàdruig Morrison, 24, and other young islanders in an open letter released on Tuesday – and which has already won encouraging noises from Comhairle nan Eilean siar, the Western isles Council.

AT first sight, the problem they identify is real and serious. Forty per cent of all properties on Tiree and in west Harris are holiday homes. in 2000 the average price for a house in the Western isles was £40,000. By 2004, it was £65,189. Last year, according to the registers of scotland, it was £123,048.

on the Highland mainland, it was £185,178. and, in the Western isles and argyll and Bute, 50 per cent of those purchases were cash sales – no mortgage involved and a tempting deal to anyone flogging off Granny’s Highland home.

it is self-evident that a young island couple – typically working in construction, for the Western isles Health Board or the local council – will struggle to compete.

and horror stories abound, like that of Christina Morrison and her husband, who returned to uist after the offer of a good job – and then found themselves repeatedly outbid by wealthy outsiders as they tried to buy their own home.

‘We were about to start a family,’ she recalls, ‘and we wanted our family to grow up here on the islands and have the nice upbringing we had.

‘When we first moved over we had a really difficult time. We stayed in a hotel at one point and family helped out with temporary accommodation.’

and by the time they did buy a property – when, by happy chance, they spotted neighbours packing up and found them eager for a quick sale – Christina was heavily pregnant with their first child.

This year, several homes on uist were bought up by strangers who had done no more than view them online. in at least one instance, the purchaser had never even visited the island. a ‘tiny, poky Grimsay bungalow’ is right now under offer for £110,000.

Pàdruig Morrison cannot be dismissed as a xenophobic nutter. a virtuoso accordionist, he has studied at st Mary’s Music school, the university of Edinburgh, and at Maynooth in ireland.

Quietly religious, the son of a late, elderly father and an outgoing English mother, the soft-spoken islesman is an assured speaker, broadcaster and tradition bearer – and fully understands why any Hebridean might be tempted to sell their property for an extra £10,000 to the jolly couple from Kent.

‘Many islanders do,’ he agrees. ‘That’s why policy is required so that converting to a holiday home requires planning permission and a change of use, allowing the percentage of second homes in a community to be capped. Maybe even only capped at the national average. Doesn’t seem that radical, does it? – or so that locals get first dibs.’

Pàdruig points out that similar rules already apply in the Channel islands and the Lake District, and are commonplace