Scottish housing market stalls

Scottish house prices suffered a fall at the beginning of this year but showed a small annual rise, according to official figures.

<link> <caption>Registers of Scotland data</caption> <url href="http://www.ros.gov.uk/pdfs/ros_statistical_report_jan-mar2012.pdf" platform="highweb"/> </link> showed the average cost of a home was £148,764 between January and March - a rise of 1.7% on the same period last year.

However compared with the last three months of 2011, the average price of a home fell by more than £8,000, or 5.4%.

The most expensive place to buy was once again East Renfrewshire.

The average property price there was £203,065.

North Ayrshire was among the cheapest place to buy, with the typical home costing £99,762.

Edinburgh suffered a fall of more than 10% from the end of 2011 to the beginning of 2012, and over the year the average home price fell by 0.8% to £202,605.

The number of houses sold over the year rose by 10.4% but the volume of sales in the first three months of this year fell by almost a third compared with the last quarter of 2011.