Welcome to our annual review of the market for Scottish estates.

The purpose of this review is to reflect on market activity in this sector during the calendar year of 2015, and to use the evidence of this to predict how the market may perform in 2016.

Before analysing the detail of the estate sales that took place in 2015, it is worth briefly re-capping on what was reported in this review 12 months ago.

Following the end of 2014, we reported that 7 estates had sold during the year in Scotland at an average sale price of £4.8m with a cumulative figure of less than £34m spent on the purchase of estates – the lowest total in many years. We cited the Scottish independence referendum – which took place in late September 2014 – as the main reason for the reduction in estate sales but also raised other reasons for the subdued activity including Land Reform, CAP Reform and uncertainty surrounding powers devolved to the Scottish government.

In predicting market performance in 2015, we stated that: ‘We expect to see normality return to this sector with a volume of between 10 and 20 estate sales expected during the year. Key factors such as UK, European and world economic performance and the result of the General Election will dictate whether the actual volume of transactions is at the upper or lower end of this scale.’

Whilst market forecasts are always attended by the risk of ‘egg on face’, the table below demonstrates that there was at least some prescience in our prediction of 12 months ago with 19 estates sold or under offer at the end of the year.

View the full report here.