ESTATE agents have hailed "calmer waters" in Scotland's property market with house values rising by an average £3776 over the course of the year, according to new research.
The average price paid for a home north of the Border is now £144,615, LSL Property Services and Academetrics said. Researchers found "green shoots" were beginning to show in the property field, with sales climbing 8% in March when compared with activity in the same month in 2012.
A total of 25 out of 32 authority areas are seeing more sales. Midlothian showed the greatest rise, with an increase of 70% when compared with a year ago.
In the crucial Edinburgh market, the number of flats being sold was up by 60% in March, compared with the same month in 2012.
Sales are being driven, in part, by a lack of property coming on to the market with competition being ramped up between buyers. This has helped lead to the rise in prices, researchers said.
Gordon Fowlis, regional managing director of Your Move, an estate agency chain that is part of LSL, said: "Although the Scottish housing market has had to battle with a lack of cheap mortgages and poor funding conditions over the past year, it looks as if the market is now sailing into calmer waters.
"The positive increases in house prices for three con-secutive months of 2013 are encouraging."
Mr Fowlis said strict mortgage lending rules were still hampering "masses of beleaguered first-time buyers".
Despite the positive outlook, house prices are still £1257 lower than a year ago, he added. "But it looks as though we are now turning a corner," Mr Fowlis said.
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