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CITY REGION BOUNDARIES STUDY

CHAPTER THREE HOUSING MARKET AREAS

3.1 A review of housing market areas (HMAs) was undertaken by Scottish Homes and DTZ Pieda in March 2001. This review mapped the wider functioning HMAs across Scotland. For each city, the review involved examining the pattern of purchaser moves from the city to specified named locations throughout Scotland. Named locations in the analysis were included in the wider HMA if a minimum of 10% of purchasers originated from the housing market's core city. Sasines data from 1996 to 1999 inclusive was used to identify house sales.

3.2 Figure 1 shows the boundaries derived for each of the four cities.

Figure 1 - Housing Market Areas

3.3 The boundaries of the HMAs do not co-incide exactly with Council boundaries but in broad terms the HMAs comprise:

• Glasgow City, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, and parts of North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire, and East Ayrshire.
• Edinburgh City, East Lothian, Midlothian and West Lothian and parts of the Fife, Perth and Kinross and Scottish Borders.
• Dundee City, part of Angus and small parts of Fife and Perth and Kinross.
• Aberdeen City, and part of Aberdeenshire.

3.4 The interdependencies between the cities and their hinterlands were not always clear from the reported data since a tiered approach to data analysis linked with a wider consultative process had been used to define the HMAs. For example migration from Edinburgh to Galashiels was reported in detail but Edinburgh to Falkirk was not, since the initial tests showed that Falkirk had a more self contained HMA.

3.5 In considering the functioning of city regions it is also important to consider absolute numbers of movers in addition to percentages of sales. The house moves from each city area were therefore plotted by Council area. For each of the four cities, the non city Councils attracting more than 200 moves are shown in Table 1.

Table 1 - House Moves by City (1996 to 2000)

3.6 This gives a slightly different picture from the boundaries of the HMAs, principally because Council areas more remote from the city are also included e.g. Fife appears in the central band for Aberdeen, and Stirling appears in the central band for Glasgow.

3.7 The DTZ Pieda analysis did not consider thin or localised housing markets or housing sub-markets. Without a much more detailed trawl for data on housing markets by Councils and Communities Scotland it is therefore not possible to comment on the extent to which the boundaries of the wider functioning HMAs are appropriate for planning housing in the city regions. In the absence of a more detailed analysis, the pattern of purchaser moves in Table 1 shows the main links between the cities and their hinterlands.

3.8 The role of the planning system in the provision of housing in Scotland was recently reviewed in research for the Scottish Executive (2001). This considered a wide range of factors on housing markets in Scotland including data on house prices, affordable housing provision and a number of other characteristics of the housing market.

3.9 The research suggested that planning has more power to steer development where demand is high and that tight supply constraints in Edinburgh could divert demand very widely to the Scottish Borders, Falkirk, Stirling, Fife, Kinross and Perth in addition to the Lothians. The boundaries of HMAs for the four cities are therefore sensitive to the planning policy of the cities.

3.10 The need for a strategic perspective is perhaps greatest for up-market property where purchasers are generally more mobile. Plots of house prices by Council area in Appendix A offer limited insight into the various housing sub-markets since price is a poor proxy for the many and varied factors affecting the operation of property markets.

3.11 Within the scope of this study the pattern of house moves therefore provides the most robust data on which to identify the broad sphere of influence of the major cities.

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