The average price paid for a house in Scotland in April 2022 was £218,394. This price is some £15,500 higher than that seen in April 2021.

This annual growth rate is the highest recorded to date in 2022. All 32 local authority areas in Scotland have seen their prices rise on an annual basis – the last time this happened was in March 2021, being the last month of the LBTT tax holiday introduced on 15 July 2020, as an incentive to keep the housing market in Scotland functioning during the early months of the pandemic.

The ending of the LBTT incentive in April 2021 caused an upward blip in prices in March 2021, as purchasers sought to take advantage of the tax savings that were available before they were withdrawn.

But, it also resulted in average prices in April 2021 falling, since most of the high-value properties had been purchased in the previous month. In part, this explains the apparent strong performance in prices in April 2022 – since the starting point for measurement purposes twelve months earlier was from a comparatively low level.

On a monthly basis, prices in April 2022 rose by 0.5%, or close to £1,100. This monthly increase is the lowest recorded in the first four months of 2022. The housing market growth rates would therefore appear to be slowing in April.

The area with the highest annual increase in average house prices in April 2022 was the Orkney Islands, where values have risen by 30.4% over the year, but the small number of transactions that occur on the Islands - just 17 recorded in April - tends to result in volatile movements in average prices, especially when expressed in percentage terms.

On the mainland, the highest increase in average prices over the year was in Argyll and Bute, at 22.7%. The statistics for Argyll and Bute were assisted this month by the sale of a 5-bedroom detached home, located just outside Oban and having a guide price of £485,000. In fact, this property sold for £600,000 – an example, perhaps, of how strong competition for the right home is tending to increase prices across the country.

On a weight-adjusted basis, which employs both the change in prices and the number of transactions involved, there are five local authority areas in April that account for 44% of the £15,500 increase in Scotland’s average house price over the year. The five areas in descending order of influence are: – Edinburgh (17%), Fife (10%); Glasgow (8%); Argyll and Bute (5%); and North Lanarkshire (4%).

Scott Jack, regional development director at Walker Fraser Steele, commented: “Records were made to be broken as the saying goes and the evidence of this month’s data supports that. All 32 local authority areas in Scotland have seen property prices rise on an annual basis.

“The last time we witnessed this was in March of last year - a month before Holyrood withdrew the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax holiday it had introduced to support the market in July 2020. While that support was rightly targeted at keeping the housing market functioning during the early months of the pandemic, what is evident now is that people are still looking to move but that a lack of the right kind of stock is supporting prices across the country.”

He added: “Our index shows that the average house price in Scotland has increased by some £15,500 - or 7.6% - over the last twelve months, to the end of April. This is a £2,400 increase over the revised £13,100 growth in prices seen in the twelve months to the end of March 2022.

“The average price paid for a house in Scotland in April of this year is £218,394, setting yet another record price for the country – the tenth occasion that this has happened in the last twelve months. This price is some £15,500 higher than that seen in April 2021, meaning that prices have risen by 7.6% on an annual basis. This annual growth rate is the highest recorded to date in 2022.”