Scottish Housing Market Review Q4 2025

Key Points

The Scottish Housing Market Review collates a range of previously published statistics on the latest trends in the Scottish housing market.

Sales

• The number of residential property sales in Scotland increased annually by 6.2% to reach 29,464 in Q3 2025. This brings the total number of sales in the year ending September 2025 to 102,757, which is the highest level since the year ending September 2022. [Source: Registers of Scotland].
• More recent data relating to the number of residential LBTT returns shows that in October and November 2025 these were broadly similar to the levels recorded during the same months a year ago [Source: Revenue Scotland].

House Prices

• Average house prices in Scotland, as measured by the UK House Price Index (HPI), increased annually by 3.8% in Q3 2025. Annual house-price growth has been positive since Q1 2024, and in each of the last 4 quarters, annual price growth has exceeded the post-financial crisis long-run average of 2.7%. [Source: ONS]

Residential LBTT

• The provisional estimate for Residential LBTT revenue – excluding the Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) – for the period between April and November 2025 was £378.6m. This represents an 8.8% increase on the same period in 2024, and a 23.4% increase on the same period in 2023. [Source: Revenue Scotland]

Private Rental Sector

• Latest data from letting agents suggest that the downward trend in new-let rental growth continued into Q3 2023: according to the Citylets Rental Index, the annual growth rate has fallen from a peak of 13.7% in Q3 2023 to 1.9% in Q3 2025, which was below the CPI inflation rate for that quarter

Mortgage Lending

• The number of mortgages advanced to first-time buyers in Scotland increased annually by 7.8% in Q3 2025, while for home movers the increase was 4.3%. [Source: UK Finance].
• In Scotland, the mean Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio for first-time buyers was 83.3% in Q3 2025, which was slightly down on the previous quarter (83.4%). Similarly, the mean ratio for home movers fell over the quarter, from 70.7% to 70.5% in Q3 2025, which is below its post-pandemic peak of 72.7%. [Source: UK Finance]
• The share of higher-risk regulated residential lending increased over the quarter from 7.8% to 8.1% in Q3 2025, which is the highest level since before the 2008 financial crisis. [Source: Financial Conduct Authority (Source: Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)]
• The total number of residential mortgage products increased by 136 over the month to stand at 7,054 in early December 2025, which is just below the series peak in September 2025 (7,062). The number of buy-to-let (BTL) products reached a new peak (5,237) in December 2025. [Source: Moneyfacts UK Mortgage Trends Treasury Report]
• Reflecting successive cuts in Bank Rate since August 2024, with the Bank of England cutting Bank Rate by a further 0.25% points in December 2025, the average interest rate for new floating-rate mortgage advances has fallen by 1.2% points over the 15 months to November 2025 to stand at 4.53%, while the average rate for new fixed-rate mortgages fell by 0.6% points to 4.13%. [Source: Bank of England]
• Despite this fall, average interest rates are still significantly above their level in December 2021 when the most recent tightening cycle began. Furthermore, the average interest rate on outstanding fixed-rate mortgages continues to trend up (from 3.35% in August 2024 to 3.75% in November 2025) as mortgages reaching their end of term are refinanced at higher rates. [Source: Bank of England].
• The number of regulated mortgage accounts entering arrears in the UK was 10,621 in Q3 2023, nearly a third (32%) lower than the post-pandemic peak in Q3 2023. The fall in new arrears is now also feeding into the stock of arrears, which in Q3 2025 was 10% below its post-pandemic peak. [Source: FCA]
• The improving trend in arrears has not yet translated into falling possessions: there were 1,328 new regulated mortgage possessions across the UK in Q3 2025, an annual increase of 37% which took new possessions to approximately their level in 2019, prior to Covid. [FCA] While BTL possessions in Q3 2025 fell by 13.9% on a quarterly basis, they rose by 28.6% on an annual basis, and remain above pre-Covid levels. [Source: UK Finance]

Housing Supply

• In the year to end of September 2025, there were 18,347 all-sector new-build completions in Scotland, an 8% fall on the corresponding period a year earlier; meanwhile, there were 14,846 starts, down by 5%. [Scottish Government]
• In the year to end of September 2025, Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP) completions fell by 23% from 8,513 to 6,582; starts also fell, by 13% to 5,222. [Scottish Government]

Input and Output Prices for New Housing

• Annual growth in total pay in the construction sector in Great Britain (GB) slowed from 7.6% in the three months to March 2025 to 3.2% in the three months to October 2025. The annual growth rate in the construction-output price index for new housing has fallen from a peak of 12.3% in June 2022 to 3.3% in September 2025, which is similar to the level it has been at since early 2024. [ONS]

Data to: 7^th January 2026

Contact: Jake.Forsyth@gov.scot; Bruce.Teubes@gov.scot