Fife property: Houses prices dropped in April

But the 1.6 per cent drop does not reverse the longer-term trend, which has seen property prices in the Kingdom grow by 13.6 per cent over the last year.

The average Fife house price in April was £164,831, Land Registry figures show – a 1.6% decrease on March.

Over the month, the picture was different to that across Scotland, where prices increased 3%, and Fife was lower than the 1.1% rise for the UK as a whole.

Over the last year, the average sale price of property in Fife rose by £20,000 – putting the area 14th among Scotland’s 32 local authorities with price data for annual growth.

The highest annual growth in the region was in the Orkney Islands, where property prices increased on average by 34.3%, to £221,000. At the other end of the scale, properties in the Shetland Islands lost 0.6% of their value, giving an average price of £188,000.

First-time buyers in Fife spent an average of £131,000 on their property – £14,000 more than a year ago, and £30,000 more than in April 2017.

By comparison, former owner-occupiers paid £198,000 on average in April – 51% more than first-time buyers.

Owners of flats saw the biggest fall in property prices Fife in April – they dropped 2.1% in price, to £97,555 on average. But over the last year, prices rose by 9.4%.

Buyers paid 12.3% less than the average price in Scotland (£188,000) in April for a property in Fife.

An imbalance between supply and demand for properties has remained the primary reason behind climbing house prices across the UK throughout the pandemic.

The need for larger deposits and constraints on accessing mortgages have pushed homeownership further out of reach for many first-time buyers – despite Government figures showing 50 per cent of renters would be able to afford the monthly payments.

In a recent major speech in Blackpool, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a “comprehensive review” of the mortgage market would take place in a bid to help more people onto the property ladder.