By MARTYN MCLAUGHLIN

Published on Friday 22 June 2012 00:00

A SUBURB on the outskirts of Aberdeen has been named as Scotland’s most expensive neighbourhood, according to an online property search engine.

Milltimber, where the average house price is £432,431, topped the list of the highest value towns and neighbourhoods anywhere in the country, according to Zoopla.co.uk’s annual Scottish property rich list.

The firm also highlighted the most expensive streets in the nation to buy property, with Edinburgh’s North Charlotte Street topping the list.

The capital address, close to the First Minister’s official residence in Charlotte Square, has an average house price of £1,791,179 over the past 12 months according to the report, some £1.6m more than the average price across Scotland as a whole.

The list placed two locations in East Lothian in second and third place respectively. Humbie, near Haddington, had an average house price of £388,076, while North Berwick had an average property value of £313,556.

There are now 31 streets in Scotland with an average house price over £1m – 14 of those in Edinburgh, reaffirming the capital’s status as the nation’s property hot spot.

Elsewhere in the list of the most expensive streets, Caledonian Crescent on the luxury Gleneagles Golf Course, where the average property price is £1,591,927, came second while Whitehouse Terrace in Edinburgh was in third place with house prices averaging £1,520,685.

Not one address in Glasgow featured in Zoopla’s top-20 most valuable streets or neighbourhoods, but Scotland’s biggest city took 20th place on its most expensive postcode list for G61, in the upmarket Bearsden area.

Nicholas Leeming, of Zoopla.co.uk, said: “The Scottish residential property market boasts some extraordinary homes and while house prices on average are lower than other parts of Britain, in Scotland you get a lot more bang for your buck.

“For example, in London’s most expensive neighbourhood, Kensington, an area the size of an iPad will set you back over £550, while in Milltimber, Scotland’s most expensive area, the same floor space costs just £124.”

The study looks at recent sales and estimates of property values. It conducts similar research across the UK, but admits that because publicly available data is less accessible in Scotland, its model is “less accurate” when applied north of the Border.

Furthermore, the figures are dependent on the number of properties sold in any given area or street, meaning that while there may be more expensive locales, they will feature less prominently if there have been no sales in the last year.

It is the second year in a row that Milltimber, six miles west of Aberdeen, has topped Zoopla’s report. A comparison with last year even suggests house prices in have increased significantly from the 2011 average valuation of £407,957.

Milltimber also came first in Zoopla’s study in 2009, helped by the fact that in the year beforehand, five householders were paid a total of more than £6m from the Scottish Government and local authorities as part of plans to make way for the controversial Aberdeen bypass.

John MacRae, a partner with property solicitors Mackie Dewar, and chairman of Aberdeen Solicitors’ Property Centre, said: “It’s never a surprise to people who live here that Milltimber performs so well in these kind of reports.

“In the area it covers, there is not a wide variety of housing types, and that’s reflected in the average price.”

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By Jason Douglas

The U.K. is to examine the pros and cons of giving Scotland the power to issue its own bonds, a senior U.K. government minister will say Friday.

Danny Alexander, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will tell an audience of business people in Glasgow, Scotland, …

NEW YORK (AP) — Moody’s Investors Service lowered its rating on Royal Bank of Scotland on Thursday as the rating firm downgraded some of the largest banks in the world.

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Other banks downgraded Thursday included Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Moody’s said in February that it might downgrade the credit ratings of major banks.