Housing Statistics for Scotland Quarterly Update: New Housebuilding and Affordable Housing Supply (published 27 June 2023)

4. UK House Price Index (HPI) new build sales transactions, as a measure of private-led housebuilding activity to end December 2023

This section shows how the latest quarterly trends in the number of new build sales transactions in Scotland to end December 2023, based on residential property transaction figures published as part of the UK House Price Index (HPI), compare to the quaterly figures presented above. Previously, this section also showed monthly figures that were ahead of the private-sector figures collected by the Scottish Government, however this is no longer included as there is no longer any lag in private sector data.

Chart 7 illustrates how the UK HPI figures compare to Scottish Government Private sector-led completion figures in each quarter from January to March 2019 onwards.

It can be seen across the period January to March 2019 to October to December 2022 that both data series generally follow broadly similar trends in respect of increases or decreases compared to the previous quarter. The Scottish Government figures are higher in most quarters, but this is likely to be explained by differences in how the figures are constructed, given that some self-build dwellings or dwellings built privately for tenures other than private sales will be included, whereas the HPI figures are based on private sales transactions only.

Chart 7: Scottish Government Private Sector led new housebuilding completions and HPI new build sales transactions. Scotland: Jan - Mar 2019 to Oct - Dec 2022.

It should be noted that the HPI-based figures are not directly comparable to the Scottish Government time series on private-led new build starts and completion, due to some differences in how the two sets of figures are constructed. For example, the UK HPI new build sales transaction figures are based on the date of the completed sales transaction rather than the date of completion, and will also not include self-build dwellings or homes built privately for tenures other than private sales.

Further information on the quality of the HPI data for Scotland, which is sourced from Registers of Scotland, is available in the HPI Quality assurance of administrative data section.