ESTATE agents say that the Scottish property market is continuing to recover with new figures showing a rise in prices and more homes being bought and sold.
The latest quarterly survey by Rettie & Co found that transactions rose by a fifth in the first three months of this year compared with the same time last year, with average prices now also increasing at a faster pace.
This recovery has also spread from cities to rural areas, with sales up by 11% in the Scottish Borders compared with last year.
The report follows figures from Nationwide building society, which found that house prices across the UK have reached an all-time high of £186,512 on average, after leaping by 11.1% within 12 months.
The new peak seen last month surpasses a previous record set in October 2007, before the financial downturn took hold, when the average value was £186,044.
Dr John Boyle, director of research at Rettie & Co, said: "If 2013 was the year that the housing market turned the corner, 2014 has seen a continuation in recovery conditions, although the market is still much reduced in terms of activity levels than it was seven years ago.
"The fundamentals continue to look strong with improving levels of economic growth, less restricted lending and improving consumer sentiment."
Managing director Simon Rettie said: "The levels of transactions in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, in particular, continue to increase as buyers' confidence returns and sellers can reasonably expect full value when placing properties on the market.
"There is a shortage of stock of most types, often leading to competition and premium offers."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article