Scottish Housing Market Review Q3 2025

Quarterly bulletin collating a range of previously published statistics on the latest trends in the Scottish housing market.


3. Residential Land and Buildings Transaction Tax

The provisional estimate for Residential Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) revenue – excluding the Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) – between April and August 2025 was £223.6m. This represents a 4.7% increase compared to the same period in 2024, and a 19.4% increase on 2023. A combination of sales growth (see Chart 1.2) and rising house prices (see Chart 2.1) have contributed to higher tax revenue.

Chart 3.1 Residential LBTT revenue (excluding ADS), £ millions (Monthly data, to August 2025)
Chart 3.1 plots monthly residential LBTT revenue (excluding ADS) for the period from April 2023 to August 2025.

Source: Revenue Scotland

Chart 3.2 plots the percentage of total residential returns received where ADS was declared due on a monthly basis between 2022 and 2025. ADS was first introduced in 2016, with the tax rate initially set at 3%, before being increased to 4% in January 2019, to 6% in December 2022 and to 8% in December 2024. The share of residential returns received where ADS was declared due has trended lower in recent years, and the 19.0% recorded in August 2025 was (other than April and May 2020 when activity was particularly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic) the lowest share since April and May 2016, immediately after the introduction of ADS.

Chart 3 . 2 Percentage of residential returns received where ADS was declared due (Monthly data, to August 2025)
Chart 3.2 plots the percentage of residential returns received where ADS was declared due on a monthly basis for the period from January 2022 to August 2025.

Source: Revenue Scotland

Contact

Email: Jake.Forsyth@gov.scot

Back to top