Until 1999, house-price inflation was something that happened elsewhere — mainly in the southeast of England. Edinburgh and Glasgow famously had their hot spots in the late 1990s, but they were nothing compared with the wholesale revaluation of domestic property that has occurred in the past four years across Britain.
Now there is scarcely a community — from Dumfries to Caithness — that has not been touched by the Scottish boom.
As in any time of change, the speed of the increase in prices has created great uncertainty. Knowing just how much your home — or the home that you want — might be worth from one month to the next is no easy task.
The Sunday Times Scotland: price guide 2004 is the most comprehensive guide to house prices yet produced in Scotland.
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We have divided the country into small, meaningful units and taken the advice of more than 50 estate agents, solicitors and surveyors. We have also drawn data from services such as Yourhouseprice.com, Registers of Scotland and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). To these we have added all the usual sources of house-price information, such as the big lenders.
Edinburgh and Glasgow are divided into areas that mirror those used by the solicitors’ property centres in those cities. Elsewhere, we have largely based figures on the traditional counties. Newer administrative areas have been used where they are well-established and accepted.
Until now, property price guides have, at best, shown prices for entire areas, without acknowledging the massive differences in value between housing types. This guide goes much further than that and shows average prices for the most typical housing types that can found in each area.
To give you the clearest possible idea of what any given house is worth, we have, in most cases, identified the neighbourhood that we have treated as typifying any given area. The price given is for the most prevalent example of that housing type in the neighbourhood. In an area where most two-bedroom flats have floorspaces of 900 sq ft, for example, it is for that size of property that we give a price. The value of a larger or small flat, or one whose condition is unusual, will vary accordingly.
The picture that emerges is a surprising one. From Aberdeen to Annan, and from Caithness to the Western Isles, prices have risen dramatically in the past year and look set to continue rising. Many of the most astonishing increases in value have been well beyond the central belt: Dingwall, Inverness and Kilmarnock, for example, have all recorded spectacular gains in the past year.
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Interest-rate rises in the past few months were intended to slow the booming property market and there is some evidence that they have started to do that.
Figures last week from the ODPM suggest that house-price growth across Scotland slowed from 23.8% in the 12 months to the end of June last year, to 22.3% in same period to June this year. This is by no means the crash predicted by some analysts.
Perhaps more importantly, agents on the ground, who are pitching for instructions and negotiating sales daily, to a person believe that the market will continue to grow, or will remain stable in a very few areas.
Little wonder, then, that this price revolution has so changed the Scots. For tens of thousands of people, it has meant for the first time in many generations that they own significant capital wealth, giving them a freedom to decide how to lead their lives that was once the province of a minority.
At the other end of the scale, the result of high prices is that getting on to the housing ladder is more difficult than at any time previously. Clearly — and this point is being made more frequently now — it is becoming likely that politicians will sit up and find ways to address these genuine housing needs.
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Perhaps the most noticeable change that house-price inflation has brought about is people’s interest in thinking and talking about property. A decade ago, with largely stagnant property prices and, in places, a lingering distrust of property ownership, it was a struggle to get going a conversation about house prices in many parts of the country. Not so today. Few dinner parties or drinks in the pub are complete without discussion of the latest state of the housing market.
It is that interest that this guide is designed to inform — and to ensure that when you launch into a discourse on the cost of flats in Glasgow or barns in Banffshire, your information is the most up-to-date and complete that is available.