Scotland’s third quarter report for 2012 showed an overall 2.1% drop in real estate transactions while Lloyds TSB announced a 5.8% fall in prices over the last three months ending in October. Meanwhile, the Scottish House Price Monitor indicates a 0.3% drop in the average annual value of homes which, when combined with other reports, adds up to continued volatility in the Scottish residential real estate market. Consumer confidence is down and any gains seen in the past summer have been wiped away by the previous quarter’s performance. For more on this continue reading the following article from Property Wire.
Average residential property prices in Scotland fell by 5.8% in the three months ending in October 2012, and are now 90% of the peak of 2008, the latest quarterly index from Lloyds TSB shows.
On an annual, underlying basis, Scottish house prices have fallen by 0.3% and the average Scottish house price is now £155,188, the Scottish House Price Monitor also shows.
Year on year prices have fallen 8.4% in Aberdeen, 3.8% in Dundee and 1.5% in the Central, Fife, Perth and Tayside region. They are up 0.2% in Glasgow, 0.3% in the south east, 0.4% in Edinburgh, 1.5% in the south west and 2.6% in the north of the country.
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It points out that the house price movement has been generated from a market with a low number of transactions. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of transactions in the Monitor is down by 26% and by 11% when compared to the same quarter one year ago. Prices continue to show volatility as a result.
For the market as a whole, Scottish house purchases during the third quarter of 2012 showed a fall of 2.1% on the same quarter of last year. For the month of September, the number of transactions fell by 7.7% compared to the same month in 2011.
‘The Scottish housing market had adjusted to the recession with a halving of sales and a period of price volatility. The previous Monitor results showed a pick up in both activity and prices. However, that pick-up has been reversed in the latest quarter leaving average house prices at 90% of their pre-recession peak,’ said Donald MacRae, chief economist, Lloyds TSB Scotland.
‘Consumer confidence turned negative at the beginning of 2011 and remained negative for 18 months. The latest figure for quarter three this year shows a return to positive territory. However, consumer confidence still remains low and the rate of increase in consumer spending remains modest,’ he explained.
‘The pick-up in activity and price of the summer has been reversed with the Scottish housing market expressing low levels of consumer confidence and a return to recession, There are no signs in this latest quarter of any robust recovery in the Scottish housing market but equally no indications of sustained, deep falls in price,’ he added.
This article was republished with permission from Property Wire.
