News / Oil boom pushes up house prices
THE CURRENT oil and gas boom is creating a shortage of private properties for sale in Shetland, pushing up house prices at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country as people buy homes to rent out to visiting workers.
On Wednesday the Registers of Scotland revealed that property values throughout the country are recovering strongly.
However Shetland easily outstrips its nearest rival Aberdeen with a huge 25 per cent plus rise in house prices since last year, compared to almost 10 per cent in the Granite City.
Estate agents have described the Shetland statistics as “skewed” due to the small size of the market locally.
Robert Bell, property manager with Dowle, Smith & Rutherford, said that while prices may not be as high as the figures suggest, sales had been particularly strong over the past six months.
“Because this is a small market it doesn’t take much for it to go from one state to another, but over the last few months it has been very busy,” he said.
“There is never a huge number of properties for sale, but now we have a shortage of properties in some areas in and around Lerwick.”
The “buy to let” market has picked up markedly as well off people purchase properties and then rent them out to the high number of workers seeking accommodation in the isles.
The rental market is virtually saturated with the travelling workforce involved in building the new gas plant and renovating the oil terminal, despite the presence of an 800 bed accommodation block at Sella Ness, a new 100 bed hotel in Brae and four flotels housing a total of 700 guests in Lerwick and Scalloway.
Pressure is only going to increase with big construction projects such as the Anderson High School and the Lerwick power station coming on stream over the next year or two.
“People moving up to Shetland are probably noticing there is not the same amount of choice that there is elsewhere,” Bell said.
The average price of a home in Shetland now is around £138,000, higher than Glasgow where the figure is £132,547.
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