New figures have revealed average house prices across Scotland are up 4.3% compared to last year.

Registers of Scotland's (RoS) newest UK House Price Index states the average price of a Scottish property in August was £144,561.

The figure is a 1.3% increase compared to the previous month, but below the UK average of £218,964.

The biggest rise over the last year has occurred in East Renfrewshire, with average prices rising by 12.7% to £219,511. The largest decline was in the City of Aberdeen, where prices fell by 8.7% to £175,922.

Overall, the top council areas in terms of sales volumes were the City of Edinburgh (1,053 sales), Glasgow City (1,003 sales), South Lanarkshire (568 sales) Fife (515 sales), and North Lanarkshire (448 sales).


RoS' director of commercial services, Kenny Crawford, said the overall volume of sales in June was 8,620, a decrease of 7.4% compared to 2015 but up 20.9% on July.

"We still may be seeing some impact from changes in Land and Buildings Transaction Tax that came into effect on 1 April 2016 for additional dwellings, such as second homes and buy-to-let properties," he said.

"These changes are likely to have contributed to the significant increase in volumes seen in March and to the subsequent lower volumes that have followed in April, May and June.

"In the five months since the House Price Index was first published in June 2016, the City of Aberdeen has shown each month the biggest annual percentage decrease in average price of all of Scotland's local authority areas. The average price in the City of Aberdeen in August was £175,922, compared to £192,744 in August last year.

"Overall, average prices in the area have fallen consistently over the last 15 months when comparing monthly average price figures with the figures for the same month in the previous year."

(LM/MH)