Scottish home sales are up 10% year-on-year, with this October seeing the highest total for eight years.
East Lothian saw the biggest boost, where the value of a typical property has climbed £14,000 (6.3%) since September – an increase ignited by new home developments coming onto the market.
Scotland also saw 30 million pound home sales between August and October, up from 14 in the previous three months.
Christine Campbell, Your Move managing director in Scotland, commented: “Movement in the million pound homes market is starting to kindle measures of Scottish property price growth in the run up to Christmas. Average property prices in Scotland have shot up £1,600 in October, twice the £761 rise witnessed in the month of September, as sales of million pound home start to glow again. This smouldering growth means that we have seen the largest month-on-month rise in property values since the introduction of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in April this year and the fourth biggest monthly jump since the August 2007, at the height of the housing boom. On an annual basis, house price growth is also shining brightly, up by 1.6% the largest increase in five months.
Throughout Scotland as a whole, there have been twice as many sales of homes worth more than £1 million between August and October, with 30 sales compared to just 14 in the three month period before. The top of the market now appears to be recovering after being initially scolded by the steeper LBTT. After the introduction of the new levy in April, home sales in this price bracket ground to a halt, but they are now picking up again. The compromise is that higher-end sellers are having to reduce the prices of their homes in order to compensate for the increased LBTT tax rate.
So far in 2015, property sales in Scotland for first-time buyers and home movers are increasing three times faster than the rest of the UK. The landmark LBTT switch has made it cheaper to buy homes – with the first threshold £145,000, 50% of home sales in Scotland are outside the system. With the average cost of a flat in Scotland only £134,000, flat sales have jumped 8% in the third quarter of this year, compared to Q3 2014. Low interest rates have also fuelled the fire, as we have seen the highest number of people taking out mortgages over the last two quarters since 2007.
Overall, this is the strongest October for sales since 2007, with 9416 sales across the month – also representing a 10% rise year-on-year. West Lothian has experienced the biggest jump in home sales of any area in Scotland, with Q3 sales up 23% on the same period last year. As can be seen in other parts of Scotland, this growth has been propelled by impetus from the bottom end, with sales of semi-detached homes soaring 50% within this time.”
