Overseas Owners of Scottish Property

Registers of Scotland (RoS) has published an interesting report on properties owned or leased in Scotland by overseas companies and individuals. 

The first report of this kind by RoS provides details of any identifiable Land Register title, as at 31st December 2017, where the registered legal owner (or tenant under a long term commercial lease) is a company. There are over 1,700 titles listed in the report, equating to about 0.1% of all land register titles.

The report was created using the address provided for the purchaser when the sale of the property was submitted for registration in the land register.

This analysis shows that on 31st December 2017, there were 15,029 titles in Scotland for which one or more of the registered buyers or tenants had an address outside of the UK at the time of purchase (including UK overseas territories). Of this total, 11.7% were overseas companies, 83.2% were individuals, 4.6% were other legal entities, such as partnerships and trusts, and 0.5% were mixed ownerships between companies, other legal entities and individuals.

Of the titles in which foreign companies held an interest, 12.4% related to tenants under a commercial lease and 87.6% were proprietors.

More companies purchasing or leasing in Scotland came from Jersey than anywhere else, while USA was the most popular country of source for individuals buying property.

The most popular areas for purchasers/tenants from abroad to buy or lease are Renfrewshire, equating to 18.7% of the overseas market, Fife (8.1%), Highland (6.5%), the City of Edinburgh (5.6%) and Glasgow City (5.0%).

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