Housing statistics quarterly update: September 2017

New Build Housing - Private-led Housing

The private sector is the biggest contributor to overall house building, accounting for more than three-quarters (77%) of all homes completed in the 12 months to end March 2017.

Previous versions of this publication included estimated figures on private led new build completions for the City of Edinburgh for 2015 Quarter 4 onwards, due to some concerns around the quality of the data derived from new build completion certificates. These estimates for Edinburgh were based on separate private new build house sales data from Registers of Scotland, with further assumptions on self-builds and private sector led section 75 completions which are not captured within this data source. Since then, an investigation into the data quality issues has been carried out and the issues have been resolved, with corrected building completion certificate based figures on private-led starts and completions being supplied by City of Edinburgh Council from 2015 Quarter 1 onwards. These figures have now been incorporated into the publication time series tables, and so the new build figures for City of Edinburgh presented in this statistical bulletin are now based on actual building completion certificates data rather than estimates.

Chart 5: Annual private sector led new build starts and completions, years to end March, 2007 to 2017

Trends over the last ten years

Between 2007 and 2008 (years to end March) the number of private sector homes started were around 20,000 to 23,000 while completions were around 21,000 to 22,000. Private sector led new build housing was hit particularly hard by the recession. The number of homes completed dropped steeply throughout 2008 and 2009 then continued to decrease more gradually to under 10,000 in 2013. Since then the number of homes completed has increased, with just a slight drop in 2017, bringing completions through the year to just under 13,200 in the year to end March 2017.

In September 2013 the Scottish Government introduced the Help to Buy (Scotland) scheme which has aimed to support buyers purchasing a new build home and to stimulate the house building industry. Following this, the Help to Buy (Scotland) Affordable New Build and Help to Buy (Scotland) Smaller Developers schemes were launched on 21 January 2016. Further information on the schemes, along with monitoring information setting out numbers of sales, is available at http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/BuyingSelling/help-to-buy.

Chart 6: Quarterly new build starts and completions (private-led), since 2006

Trends to end March 2017

Between January and March 2017, 3,212 private sector led homes were completed; 5% (156 homes) more than the same quarter in 2016 (see Chart 6). This brings the total for the year to end March 2017 to 13,187, which is 1% (182 homes) less than the 13,369 completions in the previous year.

Meanwhile there were 2,575 private sector led starts between January and March 2017, down 8% on the same quarter in 2016. This brings the total for the year ending March 2017 to 12,051, which is 9% (1,176 homes) less than the 13,227 starts in the previous year.

Sub-national figures for the year to end March 2017

Map B shows the rates per 10,000 head of population of private sector led new build completions in each local authority for the year to end March 2017.

The highest completion rates have been in Midlothian, East Lothian, Aberdeenshire, Renfrewshire, and Moray. The lowest rates meanwhile, have been in West Dunbartonshire, Angus, Glasgow City, Dundee City, and Inverclyde.

Map B - New build housing - private sector completions: rates per 10,000 population, year to end March 2017