Transparency and Scotland's rural land market

This week we publish our new Rural Land Market Data Report 2025. 

This piece of research, provides the latest insights into the landscape of rural land ownership and value in Scotland. It is the latest in a series of annual publications, offering the most comprehensive overview of what’s happening in the Scottish rural land market.

Tracking non-residential land transactions based on Registers of Scotland (RoS) data, the report provides a valuable snapshot of the market in 2024. Some of what we saw this year includes:

• Large-scale sales remain rare. Only six sales over 1,000 hectares were recorded, continuing a five-year trend where the vast majority of transactions (94%) were for land parcels under 500 hectares.
• Forestry values decline. After a boom period, the average price for forestry land dropped to £10,054 per hectare, down from £15,327 in 2023.
• The average size of a farmland sale fell to a low of 81 hectares, yet the average price per hectare reached a five-year high of £16,502.
• The number of Estate sales was the lowest in the five-year period, with just 16 sales recorded.

To produce this unique analysis, we rely on official data on transfers of ownership purchased yearly from Registers of Scotland (RoS). This data provides the four key pieces of information needed to build a picture of how land is transacting: confirmation that a land transfer is a sale, the size of the area of land sold, the price of the sale, and its location.

However, when we look closely at the data, we uncover some significant challenges. This is partly because the data's main job is to provide a public record and guarantee title for owners, but it wasn’t designed for market research, which leads to challenges in extracting the data and potential delays in recording. The challenge I would like to focus on in this blog is especially troubling: it looks like some sales may be deliberately hidden, with their true price kept secret.

When land is sold, the price is recorded as “consideration”, which is usually slightly different from its value. Transfers that aren't sales (like gifts or inherited land) are also included in this data. RoS records a list of the reasons for a land transfer without money changing hands, such as "implementation of will" or "love, favour and affection”. Transactions recorded with non-monetary considerations have a value for tax purposes but no sales price. Hence, they cannot be included in our price calculation and should simply be excluded from analysis. However, land ownership expert Andy Wightman found a recurring practice where some genuine, paid-for sales are being recorded in RoS as “implementation of missives” with no price listed. One theory as to why this is happening is that this practice aims to keep a certain level of secrecy over the sale price. In our recent analysis we had to put additional effort to verify all the sales recorded in this way, and in 2024 we uncovered 200 entries that were registered as "implementation of missives" (out of the 8,939 rural transfers). In our range of interest (above 25ha), we confirmed that 24 of these were actual sales with values between £132,000 and £28M, the largest of which was 11,572Ha. These hidden sales are confirmed through a bit of detective work by searching for evidence such as sales brochures or local news articles, which is challenging when those sales occur off-market. We then have to use the asking price or valuation as a best guess for the actual price in our analysis

Unfortunately, this means we could be missing sales and our data is almost certainly underestimating the true value of the market. This comes at the expense of transparency, which is crucial for accurately understanding the evolution of the Scottish rural land market. If this practice increases, it can skew the official data, potentially misleading policymakers, landowners, and the public.

We need transparency, especially with the Land Reform Bill, coming into force, so we can accurately evaluate its effect on the market. Fixing how transactions are recorded is a simple change, but it’s essential for making better decisions about Scotland’s land. To inform everyone, from experts to decision-makers, and finally meet our land reform ambitions, we must fundamentally transform how land data is collected and accessed. We at the commission, look forward to working with partners to deliver this crucial change.