House Prices in Orkney Islands
Updated: October 2025The average house price in Orkney Islands is £242,065.
That's the number most sites stop at.
Bread Index goes one step further.
Alongside the usual £ price, this page also shows house prices in loaves of bread. It's the same official data, just viewed through a lens that reflects everyday costs more closely.
If house prices feel disconnected from day-to-day life, this is why.
Orkney Islands Snapshot
- Average price: £242,065 (170,349 🍞)
- Peak (bread): 185,759 🍞 in June 2022
- Lowest (bread): 74,846 🍞 in March 2009
- Strongest year: 2005 (+49.7%)
- Weakest year: 2008 (-38.3%)
Scroll the chart and switch between £ and 🍞 to see how different the story looks.
Regions
Prices
Lowest Price
74,846 🍞
March 2009
Highest Price
185,759 🍞
June 2022
Lowest Growth Year
-21.79%
2012
Highest Growth Year
33.66%
2011
Average House Price in Orkney Islands
Both numbers describe the same homes.
Only one reflects what rising everyday prices have done along the way.
What the Bread View Adds
Pounds are fine for today's price. They're less useful when comparing different years.
Over the last decade, and especially the last few years, everyday costs have moved quickly. Food, energy, rent, and basics all changed in ways many people felt long before the headlines caught up.
The bread view is a simple adjustment:
House price ÷ average bread price
It doesn't try to predict anything. It just helps answer a cleaner question:
Did houses in Orkney Islands become more expensive in real terms, or did the pound quietly buy less?
House Prices in Orkney Islands Over Time
From 2004 to 2025, the Orkney Islands housing market went through clear phases.
Measured in loaves of bread:
- Highest point: 185,759 🍞 (June 2022)
- Lowest point: 74,846 🍞 (March 2009)
- Sharpest fall: 2008 (-38.3%)
- Strongest rise: 2005 (+49.7%)
If the £ line and the 🍞 line diverge, that's not an error. It's the difference between headline prices and lived costs.
House Prices by Property Type in Orkney Islands
The bread view is especially useful when comparing different types of homes.
You can see prices for:
- Terraced houses: £191,453 / 134,732 🍞
- Semi-detached houses: £228,799 / 161,013 🍞
- Detached houses: £321,029 / 225,918 🍞
Some segments clearly pulled ahead. Others mostly kept pace with rising costs elsewhere in the economy.
How to Use This Page
This page won't tell you where prices are going next.
It will help you:
- compare different years on a like-for-like basis
- understand whether past "growth" was real or inflation-led
- spot differences between property types that £ alone can hide
It's a reality check, not a forecast.
Methodology & Data Sources
- House prices: UK House Price Index (ONS / Land Registry)
- Bread prices: UK consumer price data (average loaf proxy)
- Calculation: house price divided by bread price
- Updates: monthly, as new data is released
Bread is a proxy. It's not perfect, but it tracks everyday costs closely enough to be useful.
About Bread Index
Bread Index: Finance, baked.
Most house price pages give you a number and a percentage change. That's rarely enough to understand what actually happened.
Bread Index exists to show familiar data in ways that are harder to misread and easier to relate to. Housing is the starting point. Next up are wages, rents, and deposit-to-income views using the same approach.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the average house price in Orkney Islands?
The current average price is £242,065, updated October 2025.
Are house prices in Orkney Islands rising or falling?
In pounds, prices have risen. In bread terms, the trend is upward. The difference comes from changes in everyday prices.
Is this inflation-adjusted house price data?
Not in the traditional sense. The bread view uses a real-world cost proxy instead of a formal inflation index.
Why use bread?
Because it's familiar, widely bought, and reflects everyday price pressure better than abstract percentages.
One last note
If you've ever felt like house price charts didn't line up with how expensive life actually felt at the time, this page is meant to test that feeling against the data.