First year-on-year Scotland-wide house price dip since 2016

Average property prices in Scotland showed a year-on-year fall in February 2019, the first for three years, according to the latest monthly report from the UK House Price Index.

At £145,762, the average was down 0.2% on February in the previous year, and down 3.1% on January 2019. This was the first annual decrease in the average price of a property in Scotland since March 2016. 

The UK average house price, £226,234, was up 0.6% on February 2018 and down 0.8% on January 2019.

However average year-on-year price increases were recorded in 22 of the 32 local authority areas, with the biggest increases occurring in Midlothian and Perth & Kinross, up by 9.9% and 8.8% respectively. Edinburgh saw an increase of 3.7%, Glasgow of 2.1% and Dundee of 0.7%.

The largest decreases were recorded in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire, down by 7.0% and 5.8% respectively.

Residential sales in Scotland in December 2018, at 7,392, saw a decrease of 8.2% on the original provisional estimate for December 2017, compared with decreases of 2.0% in England and 5.1% in Wales, and an increase of 4.3% in Northern Ireland over quarter 4 of 2018.

Accountable officer Janet Egdell commented: "Prices increased in around two thirds of local authority areas and different property types showed a mixed picture, indicating that the market is highly variable across the country in this time of uncertainty."

Click here to access the full report.