The Herald - The Herald Magazine
THE VOICE OF PROPERTY
INCREASED demand coupled with a lack of stock has continued to drive up house prices in Glasgow, reveals Aberdein Considine’s latest Property Monitor, which shows the average price of a home in Glasgow was £166,155 in the third quarter of 2018, a rise of 5.5 per cent yearon-year. As a result of increased competition, the firm says buyers are paying over Home Report valuations – in some cases by up to 30 per cent – to secure a property, which in turn is pushing up average prices.
The wider market in Scotland continued to show heavy demand, with three areas – Edinburgh, East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire – all exceeding the £250,000 price mark in the same quarter. Edinburgh remained in pole position with an average price of £267,035 (up 3.8 per cent on 2018), while East Dunbartonshire rose by 9.7 per cent to hit £251,547 and East Renfrewshire saw a 1.4 per cent uplift to £265,240.
In the north east, sales in Aberdeen rose for the first time in nearly two years to record an increase of 7.9 per cent, which indicated the region could be seeing the first genuine signs of a return to economic growth. Commenting on the early recovery of the energy sector and the boost to local markets, Douglas Telfer, partner with the firm’s Glasgow office, comments: “Whilst we’re still very much in the early stages of the oil and gas recovery, it’s great news, and hopefully this will continue to filter through to the rest of the country. High demand in Glasgow and the surrounding areas saw strong demand for all types of property with the Southside and West End as desirable as ever.”
A NEGATIVE POSITIVE
CONCEIVED as a project to prove that a high performance carbon neutral house could be made out of the stuff that goes to landfill, the Brighton Waste House is the first permanent ‘carbon negative’ public building in Europe to be constructed from approximately 90 per cent waste.
Using surplus material and discarded plastic, it has full planning and building regulations approvals. According to lead architect on the project, Duncan BakerBrown, “it shows there is no such thing as waste, just things in the wrong place”.