House prices in Aberdeen dipped by 8.7% in October compared with the same month last year, according to new figures.
The year-on-year fall in value, revealed in the latest Office for National Statistic (ONS) index, was second only to a slump in property values in the City of London and took the average price of a house in the city to £172,870.
Across Scotland as a whole, the average price of a property was £143,131, marking an increase of 4% on the previous year and a 1% rise compared with September.
Registers of Scotland director of commercial services Kenny Crawford said: “The average price of a residential property in Scotland continues to show steady growth, with month-on-month increases in every month this year apart from February and August. This is a significant change from last year when there were decreases month-on-month in six out of the 12 months.
“Average prices have been steadily increasing on a year-on-year basis too, with only one drop in average prices being recorded in the past three years.
“The volume of residential sales in Scotland in August 2016 was 8,468 – a decrease of 2.8% on the previous year and down 7% on last month. This compares with annual decreases in sales volumes of 20.3% in England, 11.6% in Wales and 10.7% in Northern Ireland.”
Scotland’s top five local authorities in terms of sales volumes were Glasgow City, with 1,031 sales, the City of Edinburgh (1,020), Fife (564), South Lanarkshire (520) and North Lanarkshire (415).
The biggest price increase over the last year was in East Renfrewshire, where the average price rose by 17.7% to £222.523.
Across Scotland, all property types showed an increase in average price compared with the previous year, with detached properties showing the biggest rise of 7.1% to £251,709.
The City of London saw an 8.8% fall in values, taking the average house price there to £712,936.
Kensington and Chelsea, in London, which typically has the most expensive property prices in the UK, has also seen a particularly strong price fall over the last year, falling by 4.9% to reach £1.2million on average.
Some commentators have suggested that stamp duty changes, which made the tax more expensive at the top end, have hit the market in central London in particular.
The ONS report said that UK-wide the main diver of annual house price growth came from England, where house prices increased by 7.4% over the year to October, with the average price in England now £233,000.
The report said: “Average house prices in the UK have increased by 6.9% in the year to October 2016 (down from 7.0% in the year to September 2016), continuing the strong growth seen since the end of 2013.
