Scottish Housing Market Review Q3 2025

2. House Prices

2.1. Scottish House Price Performance: National

Source: UK HPI

Average house prices in Scotland, as measured by the UK House Price Index (HPI), increased annually by 4.4% in Q2 2025. This is the highest growth rate since Q4 2022, and the sixth consecutive quarter where annual house price growth has been positive.

The average property price (mix-adjusted, geometric mean) in Scotland stood at £189K in Q2 2025. Registers of Scotland data shows that the average (arithmetic mean) house price in Scotland increased annually by 2.8% to £228K in Q2 2025. Registers of Scotland data is not mix-adjusted, so it will be affected by the composition of properties sold.

2.2. Scottish House Price Performance by Dwelling/Buyer Type

In recent editions of the Scottish Housing Market Review, we have not included the UK HPI breakdown of new build and existing property price estimates in Scotland, because, as the ONS has noted, a fall in the proportion of transactions which are processed by HM Land Registry in time for their inclusion in initial HPI estimates has meant that revisions have been larger than usual. On 20 August 2025, the ONS introduced a methodological improvement to the HPI imputation method to reduce the initial overestimation of new build provisions estimates. We will monitor these changes and if provisional estimates are no longer consistently and significantly biased upwards, we will resume reporting new build price trends.

UK HPI data shows that annual house price growth in Q2 2025 was highest for detached and semi-detached properties – average price growth was 5.6% for each property type. Meanwhile, flats had the lowest growth at 2.7%.

The UK HPI shows that the average price of a property bought by former owner occupiers in Scotland increased annually by 4.5% in Q2 2025 to £235K. Meanwhile, the average price of a property purchased by a first-time buyer increased annually by 4.3% to £155K.

2.3. Scottish House Price Performance: Local Authorities

Table 2.1 sets out the level and annual change in quarterly house prices by local authority. The small number of sales in some local authorities, such as the island local authorities, can lead to some volatility in estimated house prices despite the HPI methodology adjusting for the mix of houses sold; therefore, the change in average house prices in the last 4 quarters compared to the preceding 4 quarters is also presented. ^[2]

Focussing on the longer-term trend due to the volatility of quarterly data

shows that 28 of the 32 local authorities saw an increase in their average house price in the four quarters to Q2 2025 relative to the previous four quarters. Average house prices increased the most in the Shetland Islands (10.7%), followed by Orkney Islands (9.3%) and Inverclyde (5.7%). The three local authorities that recorded decreases were Na h-Eileanan Siar (-6.6%), Aberdeenshire (-1.2%) and Aberdeen City (-0.4%) . Although these changes were calculated over a longer time period, the notable increases in the Shetland and Orkney Islands, as well as the marked decrease in Na h-Eileanan Siar, should be interpreted with caution due to the low number of sales in island local authorities (See Table 1.1).

Source: ONS HPI