Scotland surpasses 500 £1m plus home sales in past year - with new record for sales

Scotland has seen a rapid increase in sales of property worth £1 million-plus, with 504 residential properties selling last year in a record return.

The number of residential properties sold worth £1m or more in Scotland has risen by 80 per cent in the past two years alone, new figures published by Scottish property agency Rettie & Co has revealed. More than 68 per cent of the total properties sold in the £1m-plus market were in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

Last year saw the Scottish housing market break the record for £1m-plus residential sales in a year, with 504 transactions passing the landmark price.

Data from Rettie & Co, which the agency said was involved in the sale of more than one in five residential transactions in excess of £1m, found 303 properties sold for over £1m in Edinburgh. The EH10 postcode was the most common area for over £1m-plus sales, with EH3 being the second most popular.

Scotland has seen a rapid increase of £1m plus property sales, with 504 properties sold for over £1m in the last year.

A total of 32 of the £1m-plus homes were in Glasgow and seven were in Aberdeenshire. The St Andrews area delivered 17 £1m-plus residential sales last year – a stark contrast from the zero £1m plus sales from 2017 to 2019.

The record of sales in 2022 comfortably surpassed the previous high of £1m plus home sales seen in 2020, when 419 homes were sold.

Simon Rettie, managing director at Rettie & Co, said: “[The] 2022 [year] saw another surge in the number of residential transactions throughout Scotland. We are now seeing a pattern emerge where £1m+ houses are spreading more widely from the previous core areas of Edinburgh and Glasgow, with St Andrews and East Lothian showing strong gains as they remain very desirable places to live with a limited number of prime houses coming to market.”

Rising house price inflation at around 6.5 per cent in each of the past two years is also thought to be a factor in the surge of £1m-plus homes, the property agency has outlined. Properties that in 2020 might have been under £900,000 are now valued at more than £1m, with over 130 transactions pulled into into the £1m-plus bracket in the past year as a result of inflation.

According to the latest Halifax Property Price Index, the average price of a property in Scotland is £197,784, with the average property in the UK now costing £281,684.

In a report discussing the sales trends, Rettie & Co said one of the major property trends over the past two years had been “the increase in demand for space as a result of increased working from home and lifestyle preferences”.

This trend had sparked a rise in sales of £1m-plus residential properties in rural towns and regions, accounting for almost 25 per cent of the total across 2020 and 2021, the report concluded.

The Rettie & Co figures were published just days after the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said agreed sales, house prices and new instructions to sell homes remained on a downward trend in January.

Property professionals’ expectations suggest this picture is likely to remain in place for a while longer as the market adjusts to higher interest rates, Rics’ report added.