The Scottish Land Commission (“SLC”) has published its fifth annual Rural Land Market Insights Report (“Report”), examining the performance of Scotland’s rural land market across the 2025 calendar year.
Background and methodology
The research was commissioned by the SLC to provide continued insight into the Scottish rural land market, reflecting its recognition of the need to monitor activity regularly in order to maintain an accurate picture of landowner, buyer, and seller motivations.
The Report, based on semi-structured interviews with 15 land agents operating across Scotland, provides qualitative context to the rural land price and sales data which the SLC analyses in-house, and, as the fifth in an annual series covering the 2021 to 2024 calendar years, it is designed to build a long-term, year-on-year narrative of market activity that can help to identify trends that can inform policy decisions.
This year's Report draws on interviews conducted between November 2025 and February 2026. The agents interviewed spanned a range of specialisms including, farmland, commercial forestry, estates, woodland, and natural capital, alongside general practitioners.
Overall Market Performance
The Report finds that the 2025 land market was widely described by agents as slow, static and subdued, with activity levels declining across most sectors, with fewer active buyers and longer transaction times. Agents agreed that there had been a “continuation of the softening of the market”.
The Report goes on to note that while supply and demand were broadly balanced, this equilibrium was reached at a lower level of overall activity, producing a “thin” market with limited competition, with buyers described as increasingly cautious and selective.
As set out in the Report, macroeconomic factors - including high interest rates, inflation and wider economic uncertainty - were central to this shift, alongside policy changes following recent Budgets, particularly around taxation and rising input costs, all reducing the attractiveness of land-based investment.
Forestry
It is reported that the forestry sector experienced a significant downturn in 2025, with underlying activity very low once a small number of large transactions are excluded. It attributes this to the fact that investor confidence was weakened by low timber prices, rising costs and delays in approvals, particularly for planting schemes, meaning transactions are taking longer and values for marginal land have declined.
Natural Capital
According to the findings, the natural capital market has cooled considerably after several years of rapid growth, with demand for land linked to carbon and environmental schemes falling on the back of uncertainty around carbon pricing, lower than expected returns and increasing complexity in delivering viable projects. The Report observes that buyers are now more cautious and are requiring clearer evidence of income potential, marking a shift away from speculative investment towards more evidence-based decision making. It is also highlighted that some agents noted that carbon values have not risen as anticipated, and in some cases have fallen back, eroding the investment case for new natural capital purchases.
Farmland
By contrast, the Report suggests that the farmland sector demonstrated relative resilience, with performance stronger than anticipated and demand supported by expanding farming businesses. It records that arable land remained particularly robust, while marginal land values declined due to reduced demand from forestry and natural capital buyers, and strong livestock prices helped sustain confidence in those parts of the sector. Interviewees quoted in the Report were somewhat surprised that farmland "performed better than anticipated", noting that changes to Inheritance Tax had not driven the scale of selling that had been predicted the previous year. The Report adds that those changes did, however, prompt a marked increase in succession conversations and valuation instructions from farmers.
Estates and lifestyle/amenity land
Turning to estates, the Report states that the market remained subdued, particularly for larger holdings, where both supply and demand weakened, while smaller amenity estates performed more steadily, supported by lifestyle buyers and those seeking diversified land use. It notes that underlying demand in the amenity and lifestyle sector continues, though it has softened compared with the peak seen during the Covid-19 period.
Looking ahead
The Report provides that most agents expect continuity rather than change in 2026, with the majority thinking that the land market’s performance will be broadly similar to 2025. It records that a range of factors were seen as likely to sustain the caution already present in the market, with agents pointing to the Scottish election, escalating geopolitical events and wider macroeconomic conditions.
Policy and regulatory changes have also added to that caution. According to the Report, the impact of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 appears to have been limited to date but has influenced sentiment, the timing of sales, and longer-term investment decisions, particularly for larger estates and institutional buyers.
On supply, the Report suggests that some agents expect this to remain constrained, as landowners continue to come to terms with Inheritance Tax changes and defer decisions as a result. Not all views were pessimistic, however: the Report also records that some agents anticipate the recent downward trend reversing, pointing to a pickup in interest and the prospect of stabilisation over the next 12 months. Similarly, one agent expects activity in farm sales to increase compared with previous years.
The Report also flags an expectation of divergence rather than a uniform national trend, noting that one agent anticipates performance would vary both by region and by sector.
In summary, the Report characterises 2025 as a subdued, cautious year of adjustment, with forestry and natural capital seeing the sharpest slowdown and farmland proving the most resilient.
The full Report can be accessed here.
For more information or advice on rural property or land market opportunities, contact one of Brodies Rural Business & Natural Capital lawyers.
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