Rural property values in Scotland have doubled in the past decade, according to study from the Bank of Scotland.
The average cost of a residence in the country has improved from £79,104 in 2001 to £158,923 in 2011. With a house price ascend of 101%, Scotland has seen a quicker raise than Britain as a whole where the cost of a home increased by an average of 54%.
The major rise of 162% was recorded in Moray although the most expensive place to purchase is in Aberdeenshire.
The average cost of a residence here is £198,970 which is 25% or £40,000 more than the Scottish average. The cheapest rural region is East Ayrshire at £103,981.
In metropolitan areas of Scotland house prices over the decade have increased at a slightly slower pace of 91% with the average cost of a house at £134,726.
The bank said that for first time buyers it was much more difficult to buy in the countryside than in the city.
The average cost for those trying to get on the countryside property ladders is £113,714 compared with the cost of a city property of £105,495.
During the decade first-time purchaser houses have increased by 133%.
House prices have descended for the 15th month in a succession and are set to reduce further downwards in the next few months. The caution comes from the latest national Housing Survey published today by property market analysts Hometrack which confirms that the number of new buyers fell for the second month in a row.
Meanwhile, as the number of new properties coming to the market in the nine months to September raised by 22 per cent, requirement increased by just 11 per cent, showing a widening gap in the balance between supply and demand.
Richard Donnell, director of research at Hometrack, said: “Events in the Eurozone, together with pressures on the domestic economy and household incomes, are clearly taking their toll on consumer confidence.” He predicted demand will continue to slip back over the final few months of 2011. “This will compound the gap between supply and demand and suggests a likely acceleration in the level of monthly price falls over the final quarter of the year.”
The north-south property divide is also moving upward. While price descends averaged -0.5 per cent in the second half of 2010 and -0.1 per cent in the last six months, prices in London have continued to go up, averaging a monthly raise of 0.2 percent since July 2010. Appreciably, while houses are averaging 11 weeks on the market before going below offer in the north, midlands and Wales, in London it takes just over six weeks. Similarly, while prices attained in the capital are just 6 per cent less than asking prices, in the north the figure is 9 per cent.
“The wider the gap between asking and achieved, the less slack there is to absorb weaker demand,” said Mr Donnell. “In the short-term we see above average price falls registering in the housing markets in the north of the country.”
U.K. house prices were small changed in September from a month earlier, but the three-month measure fell for the first time since May 2009 as fewer buyers entered the housing market amid fears over future jobs and earnings, the Nationwide Building Society said Thursday.
According to the mortgage lender, house prices rise a seasonally adjusted 0.1% from August and were 3.1% higher compared with September 2009. The latter figure represented the fifth successive slowdown in the rate of price growth and was also the lowest annual increase since November 2009.
In August, Nationwide said house prices fell a revised 0.8% monthly and grew 3.9% yearly. Nationwide had previous reported that house prices fell 0.9% in August from the previous month. The data for September were stronger than expected, with economist’s estimate that prices fell 0.3% on the month and grew 2.5% on the year earlier.
The data are generally in line with other recent house-price surveys reporting a slower pace of annual price growth, with economists continuing to expect little change in prices over the course of 2010.
House prices fell 6.2% in the fourth quarter and 7% in the third quarter, according to data from the Spanish Housing Ministry. Housing data can be erratic in Spain, but generally, there appear signs that price pressure is easing somewhat from the worst of the crisis that began when the market began to crumble in the second half of 2008.
A year ago, those house prices were down 9.7%.
Meanwhile, the National Statistic Office last week reported a 7.2% increase in February home sales against the prior month and 18.7% on an annual basis. It was the second straight month of gains after an increase of 2.1% in January.
The government’s medium-term plan is to decrease the deficit to 3% by 2013, in line with its commitments under the European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact. In order to achieve this, it plans a fiscal adjustment of nearly 10% of GDP.
