Registers of Scotland (RoS) and the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) have both published figures revealing recent levels of activity in the housing market, both in Scotland and the UK as a whole.

Average Property Prices

The figures from RoS were published in the latest UK House Price Index (UK HPI), and show that the average price of a property in Scotland in December 2016 was £141,553, which is an increase of 3.5% on the previous year and a decrease of 0.2% when compared to the previous month.

For the UK as a whole, the average property price in December was £219,544, which equates to a rise of 7.2% over the year and an increase of 1.4% when compared to the previous month.

Property Sales

The UK HPI also covers residential sales volumes, and revealed that in Scotland in October 2016 there were a total of 8,329 sales. This is a fall of 14.7% on the previous year and down 10.9% on last month.

Residential sales also fell across the rest of the UK, and by a greater amount than in Scotland. England experienced a drop in sales volumes of 34.5%, Wales saw sales fall by 25.9%, and numbers dropped by 17.6% in Northern Ireland.

The top five local authorities in terms of sales volumes were apparently Glasgow City (973 sales), City of Edinburgh (891 sales), Fife (588 sales), South Lanarkshire (556 sales) and North Lanarkshire (471 sales).

The biggest price increase over the last year in Scotland was in East Renfrewshire, where the average price increased by 15.4% to £220,072. The biggest decrease was again in the City of Aberdeen, where prices fell by 9.8% to £167,608.

The average price for a property purchased by a former owner occupier was £169,287 – an increase of 3.3% on the previous year. The average price for property purchased by a first time buyer was £114,716 – an increase of 3.8% on the previous year.

Mortgage Activity

The latest figures from the CML include an analysis of mortgage lending activity throughout the whole of 2016. It reveals a generally healthy picture, particularly with regards to first-time buyers.

Key figures include:

- Home buyers borrowed £127.7bn in 2016, up 7% on 2015. This came to 698,900 loans, up 3% on 2015.

- First-time buyers borrowed £53.2bn for home-owner house purchase in 2016, up 13% on 2015. This totalled 338,900 loans, up 8% from the previous year. First-time buyer borrowed more in 2016 than any other year since CML records began in 1974.

- Home movers took out 360,300 loans, down 2% on 2015, but the amount borrowed totalled £74.3bn which was up 3% on 2015.

- Home-owner remortgage activity was up 14% by volume and 20% by value compared to 2015. The number of remortgage loans was at its highest since 2009.

- Gross buy-to-let also saw year-on-year increases, up 3% by volume and 7% by value, with remortgage business accounting for nearly two thirds of the total.

“2016 could have been a potentially destabilising year of regulatory and political change, but the mortgage market has been resilient and adaptable,” commented Paul Smee, director general of the CML. “Home-owner house purchase lending increased, though the buy-to-let sector's positive lending performance has been driven primarily by remortgaging. We do not expect the market volumes to show a year-on-year increase in 2017, instead it will remain similar to that achieved in 2016.”

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