Best Places to Live in Scotland 2025
Garrington Property Finders are delighted to present the Best Places to Live in Scotland 2025.
Scotland’s property market began 2025 on a roll, with the average Scottish home worth over £12,000 (6.9%) more than it had been 12 months earlier.
Official data from Registers of Scotland shows that at the end of 2024, the average home in Scotland sold for £188,807, and that prices have been rising nearly everywhere north of the border.
However the national average masks wide regional variations. With an annual inflation rate of 11.1%, average prices rose fastest in Inverclyde, the county with Scotland’s lowest property prices. At the other end of the scale, prices have been rising nearly seven times slower in Borders, and five times slower in The Highlands.
Amid this multi-speed market, some highly desirable locations are bucking the national trend to become better value, and we’re celebrating them in Garrington’s 2025 Best Places to Live in Scotland report.
Quicklinks for reviewing the Best Places to Live in Scotland 2025
Garrington has analysed data to uncover the best places to live in Scotland and has created a tool that enables house hunters the opportunity to compare places they’re considering when shortlisting locations.
Use Garrington’s analysis tool to compare locations in Scotland
See the top 20 Best Places to Live in 2025
How to choose the perfect place to live
If you’re considering a move this year, our Best Places to Live guide can help you identify places in the area you’re interested in that offer the optimum blend of quality of life and strong value.
Our data analysts have identified more than 160 cities, towns and villages across Scotland that all score highly in at least one of four selection criteria – natural beauty, wellbeing, employment and connectivity plus value for money.
We’re making our national ranking available for free, and you can use the interactive tool below to explore the entire league table – whether you’re curious to see how your current hometown scores, or just want some suggestions for places that offer more of what matters most to you.
Top ranked locations 2025
At a glance, these are the locations that ranked highest in this year – these are the Best Places to Live in Scotland 2025:
- Bridge of Allan, Stirling
- Dunblane, Stirling
- Loanhead, Midlothian
- Penicuik, Midlothian
- Queensferry, City of Edinburgh
- Bearsden, East Dunbartonshire
- Perth, Perth and Kinross
- Annan, Dumfries and Galloway
- Tullibody, Clackmannanshire
- Cockenzie and Port Seton, East Lothian
Use Garrington’s analysis tool to compare locations in Scotland
The best places to live in Scotland 2025
Bridge of Allan, Stirling
Top of this year’s ranking is Bridge of Allan, the former spa town nestled at the foot of the Ochil Hills that’s home to the University of Stirling.
Located just three miles from the centre of Stirling, Bridge of Allan is dotted with handsome Victorian villas and scored highly in all four of the categories that determine the overall ranking.
The town first surged in popularity during the 19th century, when its spa attracted the likes of Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Dickens. While visitors no longer come to take the healing waters, its golf club and sporting facilities nevertheless powered it to 11th place in the wellbeing category of our ranking.
At £245,544, a typical home in the area costs more than the Scottish national average, but prices there rose by just 4.8% over the past year – well below the national trend – propelling the town to sixth place in the value for money category.
Dunblane, Stirling
Nearby Dunblane, the childhood home of Andy Murray, came second in the overall ranking and scooped the top spot in the natural environment category thanks to its stunning countryside and riverside walks.
With its central location and range of attractive and historic housing styles, Dunblane came fifth in the value for money category.
The top 20 best places to live in Scotland 2025
Central Belt centres of excellence
The next three spots in the 2025 Best Places to Live in Scotland rankings are all central belt towns within easy reach of Edinburgh.
Third-placed Loanhead and fourth-placed Penicuik are both a few miles south of the capital in Midlothian, and their combination of quick transport links into the city centre and abundance of well-paying jobs helped them post strong scores in the employment and connectivity category, in which they ranked 24th and 32nd respectively.
Fifth-placed Queensferry offers pretty cobbled streets and unmatched views of the Forth Bridges and across the River Forth. Its rich heritage and attractive waterside cafes and restaurants have long made it a popular place to live, and its excellent rail connections into Edinburgh and north into Fife powered it to 13th place in the employment and connectivity category of our ranking.
Officially part of the City of Edinburgh, Queensferry has the most expensive property prices of any of the top 20 locations in our 2025 Best Places to Live ranking. While the average price paid for a home there stands at £321,948, 70% above the Scottish average, it nevertheless claimed 20th place in the value for money category.
Winning in the west
Bearsden, a graceful Glasgow suburb with two millennia of history that also boasts a small loch, a nature reserve and no fewer than five golf courses, took sixth place in our 2025 ranking.
Our analysis shows that typical property prices in the area rose by a modest 1.9% over the past year – well below the national trend – propelling Bearsden to third place in the value for money category.
Only two areas in 2025’s top 20 locations saw average prices fall last year. The price of an average home in Dunoon in Argyll and Bute dropped 2.3% to £190,505, while prices in Kirkwall, the capital of Orkney that boasts an iconic harbourfront and what was voted Scotland’s Most Beautiful High Street in 2019, fell by 0.3%.
This slight fall comes after a rollercoaster few years for property values in the Orkneys. Average prices there slipped 8.4% in 2023 following a huge post-pandemic spike in price inflation; at one point in 2022, average prices rose by a third in the space of just a year, the fastest rate in Scotland.
Now market dynamics have settled down, Kirkwall’s fourth place in the 2025 natural environment category is nearly matched by its strong 14th place finish in the value for money category.
Find your perfect place to live
To learn more about individual locations within the Best Places to Live 2025 rankings you can use the tool below to compare the best 161 cities, towns, and villages across Scotland.
Simply type the first three letters of the place you’re looking for into the interactive box. Alternatively, you can view all the locations in a specific area by selecting ‘browse by county’. Click the ‘Pin me’ button to view scores for two places side by side.
Getting expert help
If you are uncertain about which area of Scotland would be the best fit for you or feel you’d benefit from the guidance and expertise of a professional property buying agent, please get in touch for a no obligation discussion about your plans to move and the services we offer.
Tell Garrington about your search for a new home.
Behind the Best Places to Live in Scotland research
Each year, our team of property experts collaborates closely with our research analysts to shape the methodology behind this report and additional best places to live guides. By drawing on a consistent set of trusted data sources, we ensure year-on-year comparability, thus allowing meaningful insights to emerge and genuine trends to be identified.
You’ll find full details of our research methodology and the data sources we rely on in the sections below.
Research Methodology
Garrington’s Best Places to Live report 2025 is an impartial, objective ranking based on publicly available data. The ranking is not based on subjective or personal opinions.
Our data team ranked 161 Scottish locations according to 12 separate criteria, including proximity to National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, air quality, crime figures, availability of high-paying jobs, transport and broadband connections.
The analysis included a total of 161 locations with a population of 5000 or more. Our report is NOT a league table of the ‘best and worst places to live’. On the contrary, the research only ranks the best places to live, so being included – whether at number 1 or number 161 – is to be applauded.
Data Sources for Best Places to Live Scotland
A wide range of data sources have been used to create the report’s proprietary research methodology. These include:
The Office for National Statistics, Scottish Government, Welsh Government, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Land Registry, Royal Mail, Ordnance Survey, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, Scottish Natural Heritage, DEFRA, BEIS, NapTAN (Ministry for Transport), PCT and Historic England.
Media Enquiries and Intellectual Property
We welcome enquiries from journalists and recognised media outlets regarding our Best Places to Live Research 2025. Our team is pleased to assist with requests for further information, and members of our senior management team are available for press interviews, subject to availability, please contact us here with such requests. We are happy to support accredited members of the press, including those from recognised publications and the Press Association.
All research findings remain the intellectual property of Garrington Property Finders Ltd. While we are pleased to share publicly available insights, we regret that our proprietary datasets are not available to third parties. The use of this content without appropriate credit or acknowledgement of Garrington’s rights is strictly prohibited. When referencing our research, please ensure it is clearly attributed to Garrington Property Finders.
