ASPC maintains a very comprehensive data base of house prices for our local housing market, unmatched by any other.  The public website contains much useful information on house prices on our information pages, readily accessible to the public.

The Registers of Scotland, where all property sales are registered also maintains a national database and is becoming more aware of the need, as a public register to produce reports of activity. Recently, the Register produced a 10 year report on the Scottish housing market. It is a lengthy and, at times, slightly impenetrable document, but rewards, diligent study.

One or two headline points are worth highlighting, now, and I hope to disseminate further information as I study the report in greater depth. Here are one or two interesting points and, for those of us in the North East, some welcome reassurance.

All local authority areas in Scotland experienced an increase in average price in the period 2006 – 2016.

Aberdeen City underwent the highest increase – a rise of 57.2%.

The greater Aberdeen area showed an increase of 44.3%.

Sales, over all of Scotland dropped, apart from Orkney, by approximately one third. (Bear in mind that late 2007 saw the beginning of the banking crisis and 2008 saw housing markets suffer dramatically as a result.)

Recovery in sales volumes has been reasonably consistent throughout Scotland, generally for the last 5 years.

Almost 40% (38.9%) of all properties sold were flats.

The remainder of sales were distributed as follows: 22% detached, 21% terraced and 17% semi-detached.

Over half (53%) of sales were in the price range - £100,000 to £250,000.

By way of putting all this in context, can I point out that, since the start of oil exploration and production, say from 1980 onwards, those of us “in the trade” reckon Aberdeen prices doubled every 10 years.  Also, this was despite three serious setbacks to housing markets during the last 36 years.

Generally speaking, despite variously caused ups and downs, house prices tend to show growth, over time. Something to hold on to when times are bad?