Cash sales for Scots homes over £500,000 up 20 per cent

A total of 599 homes that were sold for upwards of £500,000 were paid for in cash last year, compared to 501 in 2013.

The City of Edinburgh was the local authority area with the highest cash sales volume in 2014, with 254 residential properties. Aberdeen City had the second highest with 50, while Glasgow City came in third with 34.

Kenny Crawford, director of commercial services at RoS (pictured), said: “These figures indicate an increase in cash-rich buyers at the high end of the property market, particularly in Edinburgh, which had the same number of high-value cash sales as the remaining top ten areas combined.

“Across Scotland, 32.4 per cent of homes worth over £500,000 were paid for in cash last year, compared to 34.4 per cent in 2013. The picture with properties over £1m is very different, with cash sales accounting for 48.9 per cent of the market in 2014 compared to 42.3 per cent the previous year.”

In 2013, 47 homes over £1m were paid for in cash. This rose to 65 in 2014.

Aberdeen City had the most expensive individual cash sale at £3.07m. This was also the highest value sale to be registered in 2014 across all transactions, including those which included mortgages.

The second most expensive individual cash sale was in East Lothian at £3m, while the third highest was in Fife, costing £2.6m.