Our £15m home sales milestone shows just how far we've come

"It has made me reflect on just how much the property market in Scotland has changed and how we live in a completely different world now. In 1982 fewer people bought property at that time and there was a certain wariness about the risk involved in home ownership. However, the early eighties marked the beginning of the seismic shift in Scotland toward home ownership and away from social housing.

"In 1982, under 40 percent of households were owner-occupied. By 2020, the latest date for which there are statistics, this had risen to 58.2 percent which is equivalent to 1,540,000 privately owned homes. The changing cultural attitudes toward homeownership have been particularly dramatic in Scotland and were driven by the introduction of the right to buy for public authority tenants in 1979 coupled with the decline of public authority new build. These factors have produced a market unrecognisable now to the one I began my career in over 40 years ago.

"The pace of the market has increased exponentially with properties selling in days rather than weeks or months and with both buyers and sellers much more knowledgeable about pricing, markets, and the way the system works in Scotland.