Housing Statistics 2022 & 2023: Key Trends Summary

New housing supply comprises the following elements:

• new house building: houses completed by or for housing associations, local authorities, or private developers for market sale, below market rent or low-cost home ownership.
• rehabilitation: houses acquired by housing associations and refurbished either for rent or low-cost home ownership. Refurbishment of private dwellings funded wholly or partly through the Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP); and
• conversion: net new dwellings created by conversion from non-housing to housing use or by alterations to existing dwellings in all tenures.

Total new housing supply increased by 10% (or 2,161 homes) in 2022-23 compared with 2021-22, with 24,386 new homes. As Chart 1 illustrates, this is the highest total since the financial crisis impacted housebuilding in 2008-9. However, new housing supply is still 12% below 2007-8 (before the 2008 financial crisis). It also shows that the total new housing supply in 2022-23 was 5% higher than in 2019-20, before the COVID-19 pandemic restricted impacted housebuilding.

Chart 1: Total supply of new housing in Scotland reaches the highest level since the financial crisis in 2008-09

New builds accounted for 98% (23,798 homes) of the total new housing supply, with 0.5% (114 homes) rehabilitations, and 1.9% (456) net conversions. There was an increase in new builds (10%; 2,161 homes) and rehabilitations (36%; 30 homes) in 2022-23 compared with 2021-22. Whereas the net number of buildings converted decreased by 6% (30 homes).

The components of housing supply within each local authority area for 2022-23 are shown in Chart 2. The proportions of housing supply accounted for by each grouping vary by local authority.

Chart 2: Together Edinburgh, Fife, Glasgow, South Lanarkshire, and West Lothian accounted for 40% of Scotland’s new housing supply.

Further detailed figures are available in the Housing Supply Excel web tables.

Note that this measure of new housing supply does not consider any dwellings removed from the housing stock through demolitions. Annual figures on demolitions are published in the Conversions and Demolitions Excel web tables. However, these demolitions figures are not comprehensive, and we advise that they should be considered as a minimum level of demolition activity in Scotland. This is due to local authorities differing in their ability to provide information on demolitions across tenures other than for local authority housing stock.