Scottish housing market ‘defying headwinds’

John Boyle, Rettie & Co’s director of research and strategy, said: “While there is some evidence of a headwind in the market relating to the unknowns of Brexit, Scotland is outperforming wider UK trends and its major centres have many positive drivers underpinning demand. Without the fog of Brexit, the market outlook looks strong in terms of its key fundamentals, but Brexit still remains the big unknown in terms of its final form and wider impacts.”

House prices rose 3.7 per cent in 2018, with Edinburgh (6.6 per cent) and Glasgow (5 per cent) outperforming national averages. Rettie & Co’s Research Team says, “house price growth is being supported [in 2019] by supply and demand imbalances in prime, urban and family markets”.

In relation to Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), returns for Q1 of 2019 are up by approximately 1,100 transactions against Q1 of 2018, although total revenue has fallen by 5.8 per cent.

Andrew Meehan, associate director of research at Rettie & Co, said: “There are some signs of the top end of the market cooling in early 2019, which has impacted on Government LBTT revenue, down nearly 6 per cent in Q1 2019 against the previous year.”