Scottish Housebuilding Falls 10% as Affordable Housing Starts Show Signs of Recovery
Scotland completed 17,268 new homes in 2025-26, as new figures reveal a slowdown in overall housebuilding alongside encouraging growth in affordable and social housing starts.
The latest Housing Statistics for Scotland show total new-build completions fell by 10% compared with 2024-25, while the number of homes starting construction declined by 4% to 14,955.
Excluding the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, annual Scottish housebuilding completions are now at their lowest level since 2016-17, while starts have fallen to their lowest since 2012-13.
Private housebuilding continues to slow
The private sector delivered 13,494 new homes during 2025-26, an 8% annual decline. More significantly for Scotland’s future housing pipeline, private-sector starts dropped 12% to 11,018.
The picture for social housing in Scotland was more mixed.
Social-sector completions fell 16% to 3,774 homes. However, starts increased by 25% to 3,937, suggesting a stronger pipeline of social homes moving into construction.
Affordable housing pipeline strengthens
There were further positive signs within Scotland’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP).
During 2025-26, the programme recorded 6,787 approvals and 7,421 starts, representing annual increases of 42% and 37% respectively.
Affordable housing completions nevertheless fell 8% to 6,832 – their lowest level since 2015-16.
The programme covers social rent, affordable rent and affordable home ownership, including new-build developments, property rehabilitation and off-the-shelf purchases.
Scotland progresses towards 110,000-home target
The Scottish Government has committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70% intended for social rent.
By the end of March 2026, 35,368 affordable homes had been delivered towards the target. Of these, 27,297 – or 77% – were for social rent, alongside 5,089 affordable-rent properties and 2,982 affordable homes for ownership.
While declining completions underline the continuing challenges facing the Scottish housing sector, rising social and affordable housing starts could signal a strengthening development pipeline.
The challenge will now be converting those approvals and starts into completed homes at the scale required to meet Scotland’s long-term affordable housing targets.
