The Second Quarter figures for the Aberdeen and Area Property Market were released earlier this week by the Aberdeen Solicitors’ Property Centre (ASPC) in conjunction with the University of Aberdeen. 
Encouragingly they show an increase in sales volume for the second quarter in a row and show a significant rise in volume from the second quarter of 2016.
Sales prices also increased slightly over the quarter, but this should be viewed cautiously for now until it can be established if this will continue through the remainder of the year.
John MacRae, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ASPC said:-
“The second quarter figures for the Aberdeen area housing market are, for the first time in quite a while, mildly encouraging although not all the news is on the positive side. The good news is that volume of sales per quarter in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire increased by 19.2% compared to the first quarter of this year but, more significantly, showed an increase of 14.3% compared with the second quarter of 2016.”
“Ordinarily, such figures would cause considerable satisfaction, but these figures have to be set in the context of comparing this year with 2016 and taking into account that 2016 was the fourth year of a steady reduction in volume of sales in our area. Nevertheless, having seen the first two quarters of this year show an improvement, the effect has to be mildly encouraging and reassuring. These figures back up the anecdotal evidence amongst the Solicitor profession that things have been slightly better than they were last year and, if the trend continues, we may be seeing the start of a gradual recovery in our local market.
We should not get too far ahead of ourselves, however, because increasing stability in the oil industry, which is beneficial to our area, has to be set against the national and international news background which can lead to a lack of confidence in consumers. We are certainly not out of the woods yet but this may well be the year that we saw our market start to pick up.”
Amy McKay is an Associate working in our Aberdeen office.