Reports today in The Herald that, according to Registers of Scotland data, East Renfrewshire has replaced Edinburgh as the highest house price area in Scotland. However, as always, beware such statistics!
As soon as you look at these statistics, they look a little suspect with East Renfrewshire apparently seeing a 10% rise in prices in the past year. This is against a backdrop, UK-wide, of stagnant or slightly falling prices and a bleak outlook for the UK and global economies. In the same period, Edinburgh prices are down nearly 3% apparently. It makes a good headline. However, I struggle to believe that prices across the board in an area have gone up 10% in any part of the UK.
In certain areas of Edinburgh a couple of years ago, where we saw prices apparently going up by about the same amount in spite of crisis in the market everywhere else, it’s probably just a disproportionate number of high value properties selling against a backdrop of continuing tough conditions for buyers and sellers at the lower value end of the market. The information I have from Glasgow-based agents is that conditions continue to be very tough there and that there are not in fact a huge amount of properties selling. As always, however, higher end properties see higher demand during tough times.
Be interesting to see if any of our predominantly west-coast based colleagues believe that these stats are true or just a bit of an anomaly…
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