Lindsays is on track to exceed £200m in total home sales in 2025. Following a steady market in 2024, the firm expects continued growth as trading conditions stabilise, benefiting both buyers and sellers. With interest rates predicted to fall, the team is optimistic that this positive trend will carry on into 2025.
In 2024, our teams in Edinburgh, Dundee, and Perth successfully sold homes valued at £194.8 million, representing a 14% increase from the previous year. With this momentum, we are confident that we will surpass £200 million in home sales in 2025.
Maurice Allan, Managing Director of our Residential Property team, explains:
“The signs are pointing to steady growth in the market over the course of 2025. There will be a good volume of properties on the market. As a firm, we certainly expect to sell in excess of £200m-worth of homes during this year.”
After a challenging 2023 for the entire market, the past year was the first since before the coronavirus pandemic where there was a full 12 months without extremes – from the price surges following the lockdown or the downturn triggered by the rise in interest rates after the Liz Truss-Kwasi Kwarteng budget of 2022.
Maurice continues, “We are now operating in a more predictable, tradable market - which is better for having those real highs and lows removed from it. You can far better predict where offers should be pitched. A settled market is a good market.
“That has allowed more and more people to move back to the traditional pattern of selling their current home before placing offers to buy their next one, which is putting them in a far stronger position as bidders.”
Of the properties sold this year, £115.2-worth were through our Edinburgh team, £69.4 were in Dundee and £10.1m in Perth.
While the Bank of England held interest rates at 4.75% last month (December), analysts are forecasting as many as four reductions in the base rate of interest over the course of this year.
Andrew Diamond, Partner and Head of Residential Property, said:
“The outlook for the market is probably as settled as we have seen it for a number of years.
“We could be looking at a situation where, by this time next year, the base rate of interest is 1% lower than it is now. Lending is already fairly sensibly priced, but this will make things even more attractive to borrowers.”
The latest House Price Index for Scotland shows the average price of a property in October 2024 was £197,000, an increase of 5.5% compared to October 2023.
The City of Edinburgh was the highest-priced local authority region in which to buy a property, with an average price of £340,000. The lowest-priced areas were Inverclyde and East Ayrshire, where average prices of £133,000 were recorded.
Published in The Scotsman, 3 January 2025
