Annual house price figures show £10k increase for Highlands
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The average price paid for a house in the Highlands in April 2022 now sits at £223,813, setting yet another record price as property prices continue to soar.
This price is some £10,123 higher than the figure recorded in April 2021, meaning that prices have risen by 4.7 per cent on an annual basis. This annual growth rate is the highest recorded to date in 2022.
The Highland rate of increase is marginally lower than the national average of 7.6 per cent, however the region represents a higher price paid for a house than the Scottish average, which sits at £218,394.
Highland is ranked eleventh across all of Scotland's local authority areas, just behind the Scottish Borders.
All 32 local authority areas in Scotland have seen their prices rise on an annual basis – the last time this happened was in March 2021, being the last month of the LBTT tax holiday introduced on 15 July 2020, as an incentive to keep the housing market in Scotland functioning during the early months of the pandemic.
Scott Jack, regional development director at Walker Fraser Steele, said: “Records were made to be broken as the saying goes and the evidence of this month’s data supports that. All 32 local authority areas in Scotland have seen property prices rise on an annual basis.
"The last time we witnessed this was in March of last year - a month before Holyrood withdrew the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax holiday it had introduced to support the market in July 2020.
"While that support was targeted at keeping the housing market functioning during the early months of the pandemic, what is evident now is that people are still looking to move but that a lack of the right kind of stock is supporting prices across the country."
On the mainland, the highest increase in average prices over the year was in Argyll and Bute, at 22.7 per cent. The statistics for Argyll and Bute were assisted this month by the sale of a 5-bedroom detached home, located just outside Oban and having a guide price of £485,000.
This property, which sold for £600,000 is an example of how strong competition for the right home is tending to increase prices across the country.
The area with the highest annual increase in average house prices in April 2022 was the Orkney Islands, where values have risen by 30.4 per cent over the year, but the small number of transactions that occur on the Islands - just 17 recorded in April - tends to result in volatile movements in average prices, especially when expressed in percentage terms.
