Scottish House Prices

This is a short update on the house price information we use in the Citylets Rental Report.  There are numerous house price indices available but we focus on the two which we feel give us the most reliable picture.  The index produced by the Department of  Communities and Local Government (CLG) is now being published direct from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).  This particular index covers the whole of UK with a breakdown by region, and country and is based on data from the regulated mortgage survey (RMS) which is supplied to ONS by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).  RMS is a very large sample of all mortgages and so has distinct advantages over indices produced by individual lenders who have a  limited share of the mortgage market.  It allows us to compare house price trends at national level, and as the chart below shows the market in Scotland has performed better than any other home nation over the last decade.  The meteoric rise and fall of the sales market in Northern Ireland is there for all to see.  In the meantime rental levels in Belfast have remained solid with only a slight fall of 1.8% over the year to Q1 2012 (£557).

 

 

The other house price information we work with is published by Registers of Scotland (ROS) at the national and local authority level. Its advantage is that it is based on actual sales rather than mortgage information, so it includes cash transactions. You can see how the distinct seasonality of the ROS index, which invariably rises in Spring/Summer and falls in Autumn/Winter is smoothed out in the CLG index.