By Ian McConnell
SCOTTISH law firm and estate agent Lindsays has revealed its home sales in the year to March exceeded those in the prior 12 months, even though there was a near-three-month “wipeout” of house-moving activity amid the first coronavirus-related lockdown.
It flagged major differences between the Covid crisis and previous periods of uncertainty in terms of the effect on the housing market. Lindsays said the volume of sales by its residential property division rose by 4.26 per cent in the year to March 31. Homes valued at a total of £177.3 million changed hands through this team in the 12 months to March.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell:Brexit could have taken many forms. Cheshire Cat Boris Johnson chose this one
The firm said: “That is despite the house-moving industry being close to dormant for almost three months…through restrictions to slow the spread of the virus.”
Lindsays, which recorded £100m worth of sales between August and November alone, declared the housing market had “bounced back in unprecedented style”.
The firm reported a near-9% rise in the volume of its home sales in Edinburgh in the year to March. The value of sales in Edinburgh increased by 6.39% to £102.5m. The remaining, near-£75m of home sales were in Tayside, where Lindsays noted the number of properties sold was “level on the year, highlighting the steady nature of the regional market”.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell — Boris Johnson's offensive and ill-judged talk spells danger
Maurice Allan, managing director of residential property at Lindsays, said: “The financial consequences of Covid-19 are unlike anything we have seen before in the fact that lenders are still making money available to borrowers - and that the Government is encouraging them to - despite the wider challenges in the economy, something we have not experienced in previous periods of uncertainty. That continues to be good for the property market.”
He added: “There’s no doubt that many people used the first lockdown as an opportunity to think about where they wanted to live ¬- and were quick to react when restrictions eased in the summer. In 20 years in the property industry, I have never experienced such intense interest as when we worked our way through that bottleneck.
“Had anyone told us this time last year that we would be recording an increase in sales, when compared to 2019/20, I would have struggled to believe them.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel