SALES of £1 million properties are booming in the north-east despite a slowdown in the prime property market elsewhere.
Estate agents Savills said they handled record sales of homes worth £1m or more in Aberdeenshire during 2011, while a number of similar properties were snapped up in Ayrshire.
The two regions are bucking a trend which has seen a slight fall in the number of prime properties changing hands, although sales are still up from the house price slump three years ago.
Overall, Savills said they had sold 2206 homes worth £400,000 or more, compared to the 2355 recorded in 2010.
However, in Aberdeenshire there were 19 sales at £1m and above in 2011, almost double the figure recorded the year before.
Six houses in the region went for asking prices of more than £2m. There was also the sale of Aberdeen's first £3m home.
Ayrshire had six sales of houses valued at £1m or more, compared to only one in 2010 and two in 2009. The highest of these sales was Bargany House near Girvan which sold for £1.9m to buyers from Los Angeles.
Faisal Choudhry, head of Savills Research in Scotland, said that – while the oil boom in the north-east was fuelling property prices – buyers were still wary of paying over the odds.
He said: "Prime Scottish property looks increasingly good value, but only where it is marketed at an appropriate price and this has already begun to attract the attention of London buyers this year."
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