ROCKETING prices and low mortgages – reports reveal a new Covid crisis emerging in the housing market.

News that the average residential property in Scotland now costs £194,100 may be good for sellers, but buyers face tough conditions, new data shows.

According to Registers of Scotland (RoS), that’s an increase of almost 7% since 2019-20 and a massive 25% leap on the pre-financial crash average of £154,800 in 2007-08.

Almost 95,500 sales took place across the country in 2020-21, with lockdown hitting the market before a steady climb culminated in the highest number of purchases since 2007 in December.

Prices then were also the steepest seen in more than a decade, with another spike seen in March this year. RoS says “fewer properties on the market due to Covid-19 measures may be driving up prices”, with the market “‘catching-up’ following lockdown measures”.

Alan Cumming, national estate agency director at Aberdein Considine, said that’s “no surprise” and “from the second half of 2020, family homes in particular have been selling like hotcakes and the market is hungry for new properties, making this a great time to consider selling your home”.

However, the news isn’t so great for those trying to take their first step on to the property ladder.

Robert Gardiner, chief economist at Nationwide, says mortgage rates remain close to all-time lows and house prices in some places “are close to a record high relative to average incomes”. It is, he says, “even harder for prospective first-time buyers to raise a deposit”.

In Stirling, Sam Martens started looking to buy his first home in 2019. He’s still looking.

“Houses are going about £10,000-£15,000 above what I would have expected,” he says. “They’re going really quickly when they go on the market and they’re going above and beyond asking prices. It’s really difficult.”

Martens is among those looking for the family homes Cumming describes. He and his partner would like a three-bedroom semi with a garden, so they’ve come up with a new solution to avoid the open market – new builds.

More than 300 new homes were approved as part of Raploch regeneration moves, and developments like Castle Meadows provide new hope for first-time buyers, says Martens, who has his name down for a plot.

However, the pandemic has also held up construction projects and RoS says the volume of new-build residential sales fell by more than a quarter year-on-year in 2020-21. Stirling is one of just six council areas where sales volumes in this sector of the market actually rose, with the others being Dundee, East Ayrshire, Na h-Eileanan Siar and North Ayrshire.

Compared with the rest of the UK, though, Scotland’s prices appear in a different light – they’ve grown half as much as top-performing Northern Ireland (£163,600), while costs in London remain much higher than anywhere else. The average home there will set you back by more than £509,900.

For the UK as a whole, prices rose 13.4% in the year to June – the fastest pace seen since November 2004.