Housing Statistics For Scotland Quarterly Update (Published 14th June 2022)

4. UK House Price Index (HPI) new build sales transactions, as a measure of private-led housebuilding activity to end January 2022

This section sets out the latest quarterly and monthly trends in the number of new build sales transactions in Scotland to end January 2022, based on residential property transaction figures published as part of the UK House Price Index (HPI) .

The HPI figures show that there were 3,182 new build sales transactions in Scotland in the latest quarter October to December 2021, an increase of 3% (81 transactions) on the 3,101 transactions seen in the same quarter in 2020.

More recent HPI figures for the month of January 2022 show a total of 520 transactions for this month (see Chart 7a). This brings the total transactions in the year to end January 2022 to 11,663, an increase of 38% (3,202 transactions) on the 8,461 transactions recorded in the year to end January 2021.

It should be noted that the HPI-based figures are not directly comparable to the Scottish Government time series on private-led new build starts and completion, due to some differences in how the two sets of figures are constructed. For example, the UK HPI new build sales transaction figures are based on the date of the completed sales transaction rather than the date of completion, and will also not include self-build dwellings or homes built privately for tenures other than private sales.

Further information on the quality of the HPI data for Scotland, which is sourced from Registers of Scotland, is available in the UK HPI Quality Assurance section of the UK House Price Index web page.

Table 3 and Chart 7b below illustrate how the UK HPI figures compare to Scottish Government Private sector-led completion figures in each quarter from January to March 2019 onwards, and also provide the latest trends seen in the UK HPI new build sales transactions figures across the more recent quarter to October to December 2021.

It can be seen across the period January to March 2019 to July to September 2021 that both data series follow broadly similar trends in respect of increases or decreases compared to the previous quarter. The Scottish Government figures are higher in most quarters, but this is likely to be explained by differences in how the figures are constructed, given that some self-build dwellings or dwellings built privately for tenures other than private sales will be included, whereas the HPI figures are based on private sale transactions only.

Note there were 520 transactions recorded in the most recent month of January 2022, which brings the total 12 month figure to end January 2022 to be 11,663, an increase of 3,202 (38%) on the previous year to end January 2021.