Scots homeowners moving to a new house have faced the biggest increase in prices in the UK over the past decade, new research said.
A study by the Bank of Scotland found the average price paid by those moving home had increased by 54% over the period, a greater rise than anywhere else in the UK.
The latest figures, for the year ending June 2013, showed those moving home paid an average of £170,534 for their new property, compared to £110,952 in 2003.
The Bank of Scotland Homemovers Review alsofound it had got slightly more affordable for people to move up the housing ladder to their second home in the past year.
But the situation for so-called "second steppers" was still much harder than it was a decade ago.
In June this year the average cost of a second home, minus equity from a current property, was 3.9 times gross annual average earnings. This was a slight improvement from June last year, when it was four times average earnings, but a decline in affordability when compared with a ratio of 2.6 in 2003.
Typically, those looking to move to their second home would have been first-time buyers in 2008 with an estimated £13,985 of equity in their property, about 10% of the average cost of a semi-detached house.
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