Million Pound House Sales Double

25 October 2015, 09:05 | Updated: 30 March 2016, 13:50

The sale of houses worth at least £1 million has more than doubled over the last year, according to a report.

There were 111 sales of more than £1 million in Scotland in the first half of this year, compared to 43 in the same period in 2014.

The majority of properties involved are in Edinburgh, where there were 63 sales, the Bank of Scotland million pound property report found.

The next highest areas were East Lothian, with nine seven-figure sales, Aberdeen with eight and East Renfrewshire and Glasgow, where there were four each.

Four council areas - East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, South Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire - went from having no million-pound sales in 2014 to three or four in the first half of this year.

The large increase in activity is in contrast to the rest of the UK, where there was an 11% decrease in £1 million sales over the last year from 6,303 in 2014 to 5,599 this year.

London accounts for more than half of million-pound property sales in the UK, with 3,703 in the first half of 2015.

Experts believe changes to stamp duty south of the border may have caused the fall in sales.

Bank of Scotland economist Nitesh Patel said: "The amount of homes in Scotland that have sold for more than a million pounds has more than doubled within a year, which is a stark contract to Great Britain as a whole, which has seen an 11% decrease.

"Sales south of the border may have been impacted by the new stamp duty rates last December; whilst the equivalent land and building transaction tax came into force for Scottish homebuyers only in April.

"Edinburgh, East Lothian and Aberdeen continue to dominate the market share of million-pound property sales in Scotland.''