Scottish Property Market 2025 – 2026
The Registers of Scotland have recently published “The Scottish Property Market Report 2025-26”, and it is packed full of information and statistics, providing a long-term review of trends in residential and non-residential property sales from 2003-2004 to 2025-2026.
For those of you who like to keep an eye on the property market both locally and nationally here are some key points in relation to the residential market.
• In 2025-26, the median residential sale price in Scotland was £198,000, an increase of 4% from the previous year. If we look over a longer period, the median price has increased by 41% over the last 10 years.
• The total number of sales increased by 5% to 104,408 between 2024-25 and 2025-26.
• The total market value of residential sales was £24.3 billion in 2025-26, an increase of 7% compared to 2024-25.
• Around two thirds of residential property sales in Scotland were £250,000 or less last year.
• In 2025-26, detached properties had the highest median price of all property types at £324,995, and flats the lowest at £138,017.
• There were 10,290 new build residential property sales in 2025-26, 8% more than in 2024-25, and 10% of residential property sales in Scotland were new builds.
The report provides lots of interesting data on the markets in areas throughout the country, and also at Scotland’s 8 cities:
As you will see above, Inverness has the 2nd highest median price in Scotland, following only Edinburgh. This demonstrates the popularity of the Highland Capital as a place to live but of course brings its own difficulties for those looking to take those first steps on the property ladder.
If we look at the wider picture for Highland region, the median price was actually £212,500 for 2025 – 2026 – demonstrating the problems for first-time buyers considering moving out with Inverness in search of that first home.
And how are we paying for these new homes – in 2025-26, 69% of residential sales were with a mortgage, with 31% of sales being cash sales.
The volume of residential sales with a mortgage decreased sharply in the years following the 2008 financial crisis, and you will see the massive decline shown above. Sales with a mortgage gradually increased over time until 2020-21 when the market was impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, with numbers being slightly more volatile since then.
For those wishing to read the full report, this can be found here.
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