Median price at August 2008: £174,518

General increase since Sept 2007: 12%

Projected increase to Sept 2009: 0-2%

Five-year increase: 101% (£86,648)

Ten-year increase: 209% (£56,390)

The complete Skye and Uist price guide

“Much like the weather, all a little bit gloomy but not too bad,” is the summation of the market in the tourist hot spots of Skye and Uist this year, according to Pauline Eggermont of the Isle of Skye Estate Agency.

But after a ten-year average price gain of 209%, the agent has every reason to be sanguine. According to HBOS, without question Highland Council’s jurisdiction has enjoyed the biggest percentage boost of the current decade — albeit its house prices have grown rapidly from a historically low figure. As jewels in the Highlands’ crown, Skye and Uist have been particular beneficiaries of a tourism-based strategy that has seen the islands reinvent themselves as centres for fine dining, outdoor pursuits and music, reflected in the influx of holiday homers to the islands.

However, as with everything that captures the public’s imagination, inevitably there comes a tipping point and Eggermont said last time that spreading news of the boom in the islands has encouraged an influx of untrained agents who are undermining years of good work by established firms, creating unsustainable expectations and offering poor service that inevitably “tars every agent with the same brush”.

“There has been no increase in Skye prices this year,” she says, “as the obvious difficulty with obtaining mortgages is having an effect and we have so much choice now as a result. It’s a buyers’ market here. Most of the island’s buyers come from south of the border and they are often carrying financial baggage from their own domestic situations. Uist is a little better as the prices are still so much lower than most and it is attracting people fairly well.”

However, it seems unlikely that this part of the world will suffer unduly in the medium term — it has far too much going for it and remains as popular as ever beneath the worries over lending. Now probably represents the ideal opportunity to buy, for as soon as the sun returns, the misty-eyed tourists will be out in force bringing their chequebooks with them.

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