Scottish rental market shows Aberdeen about to slip below Glasgow

Scotland’s rental market swings to extremes, suggests the latest figures from website Citylets.

On the one hand the Scottish average rent has risen to £768 per month with Edinburgh in particular performing strongly - rents in the capital have broken through the £1,000 per month threshold.

Glasgow, too, is continuing to rise and is now £740 per month, an all time high for the city and growth of 4.2 per cent over the last year. 

However Aberdeen - once Scotland’s highest value rental market thanks to the oil industry - is now on the way down thanks to long-term falls in oil prices. The latest CityLets figures show Aberdeen falling to the Scottish national average rent level of £768.

Glasgow is now set to overtake Aberdeen in the next few months. 

“The first quarter [2017] numbers are noteworthy on a number of levels including Aberdeen now seemingly finding its new level and likely to level off by the end of the year. Glasgow, historically a social rent city, looks set to overtake the UK’s oil and gas capital in Q2 - something nobody would have predicted just three years ago” explains Thomas Ashdown, managing director and founder of Citylets

“Strong growth has returned to the central belt at circa five per cent, slightly down on the longer term trend of six per cent and possibly representing a new norm for the major cities in the region” he says. 

Because of a shortage of supply, Ashdown adds: “The findings also represent further evidence of the pressing need for Build to Rent and other related initiatives to be rolled out to increase supply for the benefit of the Scottish housing market.”