Housing market in Argyll & Bute today….versus the past
We’ve written a number of blogs on house prices and the state of the property & housing market in Oban and Argyll & Bute, and for this blog I thought I’d concentrate on where the market is today in Argyll & Bute compared to the state of the market before and since the recession.
Despite some media comment stating the prices have now returned to pre-crash levels – which may be true in some regions of Scotland – the figures specifically for Argyll & Bute don’t reflect this. The peak average figure for Argyll & Bute occurred, as you might expect, just before the recession in Q3 2007 with a figure of £168,049. The most recent quarterly figure (Q1 2015) was over £10,000 less at £157,971. Or to compare like for like, the most recent quarter 3 (2014) had an average price of £150,087, some 10.7% below the peak. Although there have been a few isolated quarters that have shown average prices close to the peak, that hasn’t been representative of the wider picture and therefore it wouldn’t be correct to say that prices have completely returned to pre-recession levels in this area.
So you might be wondering about the value of your own property in today’s market versus when you bought, so we’ve put together a ‘ready-reckoner’ style chart based on Registers of Scotland’s Average Quarterly house price figures, but it might take a bit of explaining…
What the chart shows is the percentage increase or decrease in the value of Argyll & Bute property value today (Q1 2015) against when it was bought (in isolation, and in absence of any other factors). For example, if you bought your property in November 2006 (Q4 2006), you’ll see that the figure for Q4 2006 is 12.2% which means that, in theory, the property is now worth 12.2% more than it was when it was bought.
If, however, you bought your property in November 2007, in theory your property will be worth 3.2% less today than when it was bought.
I say ‘in theory’, as in practice there is a myriad of factors that affect the value of any particular property, and therefore this should be used as a very rough guide only.
For any homeowners out there, the positive that can be taken from this is that, unless you bought in one of the 6 ‘red’ quarters on our chart, your property should now be worth more than you paid for it. Those who sold a property around quarter 3 2007 have probably played the property game best of all, although I use these terms very loosely as, as we covered in a previous blog (http://www.fiuran.co.uk/oban/house-home-asset/) a house is much, much more than an asset, and the property market is certainly not a game!!
