Housing crisis

Yet again you report: “House prices up” (14 July). This a common but misleading headline with a misleading report. Prices are not up; the average price of those achieving a sale is up.

This would suggest middle Scotland is on the move but at the lower end we are not seeing movement.

To illustrate how these figures are calculated – if in Scotland only one house sold in a month but it sold for £1 million we would be saying the average house price in Scotland is £1m. This would not be a true picture of the housing market.

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This reporting is unhelpful as it is hiding the fact that great swathes of Scotland are sitting with empty, unsold houses as people are being discouraged by Holyrood policies from moving to Scotland, or at least rural Scotland.

In ten years of SNP government we have seen the volume of sales across all of Scotland fall over 35 per cent (see Registers of Scotland’s ten-year report).

People are leaving the country if they can get their house sold, at least in rural parts, and are not being replaced. So long as we get these unhelpful headlines and reports we are hiding the crisis in a large part of our housing market, which is causing a lot of grief to house owners who are trapped and unable to sel. They are stuck where they are lor are leaving empty properties.

And for many of these people price is not the issue, it is simply a lack of demand, ie few buyers. The price can be low but there will still be no takers (auctioneers can vouch for this).

Iain McDonald

Queen Elizabeth Drive

Castle Douglas