Our latest investigation has found the financial rewards of Scotland’s energy transition are being unevenly distributed. The money earned by landowners often dwarfs the payments that wind farm developers make to local communities.
Composite image of, from left to right, Alyn Smith, Stephen Flynn, Irshad Ahmed, and Malcolm Offord. Credit: Scottish Parliament and yvonnestewarthenderson/iStock
Some of Scotland's new MSPs are landlords, own multiple homes, or benefit from lucrative holiday lets in areas among those worst hit by the housing crisis, The Ferret can reveal.
At least 10 of the Scottish Parliament’s newly-elected members own more than one home, while six returning MSPs declared additional properties in the previous Holyrood session.
Among those we identified are a Reform UK MSP representing the Highlands and Islands with four homes in Edinburgh, as well as the party’s leader in Scotland, Malcolm Offord, who recently professed to owning six homes. We also found two politicians – from Reform and the SNP – typically charging more than £1,000 a week in the coming months for holiday lets in rural areas which have declared housing emergencies.
Others include the SNP’s former Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, who is the registered landlord of an Aberdeen flat.
Housing campaigners said politicians should not have more than one property during a housing emergency. They claimed that by being landlords, or operators of short-term lets, MSPs are profiting from the housing crisis and may not understand the struggles their constituents have in finding secure accommodation.
A former MSP claimed landlord politicians “have a clear vested interest in the law governing residential tenancies”, while second property owners could be “denying others the opportunity of having a first home”. However some politicians contacted The Ferret to explain complex family situations, which they claimed were the reason for owning more than one property. The SNP said all its MSPs would log details on the register of interests, which has to be completed by 14 June.
A housing emergency was declared when the Scottish Parliament passed a motion in 2024, with 14 councils having done so independently.
According to the most recent figures, there were over 20,000 homeless applicants in Scotland between April and September 2025, nearly a tenth of whom had slept rough or spent the night before on the streets. More than 10,000 children were in temporary homeless accommodation in this period.
They typically spent almost nine months in temporary homes, but in some local authorities this was longer. In Edinburgh, people spent an average of 17 months living in homeless accommodation.
MSPs’ city property investments
The capital is Scotland's most expensive place to buy or rent property, with rental prices having doubled in the Lothians in the past 15 years.
MSPs with multiple properties in Edinburgh – which declared a housing emergency in 2023 – include Reform UK’s Victor Currie, who contested Shetland unsuccessfully but was elected via the Highlands and Islands regional list.
He owns four residential properties in the capital either in his own name, or via his real estate firm BJVC Properties, which was incorporated in June last year. Two of these were flats in Newhaven gifted to him in 2015 and 2025 respectively. None of Currie’s properties feature on Scotland’s landlord register, or Edinburgh’s short-term lets log.
Labour MSP Irshad Ahmed, who was elected on the Edinburgh and Lothians East list, owns three residential properties in the region. Ahmed is the registered landlord of two of them – a Musselburgh flat, and an Edinburgh house.
Julie MacDougall, a Reform UK Mid-Scotland and Fife MSP, is the registered landlord of an Edinburgh flat, which she owns in addition to her Kirkcaldy home.
The SNP’s Alyn Smith, now MSP for Stirling, owns a house in the city and another in Edinburgh. When Smith was the MP for Stirling, he said in his register of interests that the capital property was co-owned with and occupied by family members.
Reform UK’s leader in Scotland, Malcolm Offord, made headlines after bragging about his six houses, six boats and five cars during a debate ahead of the election. Homes under his name in Scotland include flats in Edinburgh and Greenock, and a mansion on the banks of Loch Lomond – bought for £1.65m cash in 2024.
The sale price of Offord’s Edinburgh flat is listed as “implementation of missives” – which is sometimes used to conceal typically high-value property sales from the public land register. Offord also reportedly owns a London flat, which he reportedly paid £2.15m for in 2017.
His Reform UK colleague, Edinburgh and Lothians East MSP Angela Ross, owns two neighbouring homes in Dunbar.
Aberdeen also declared a housing emergency in 2024, describing the situation as “grave”. Homeless applications in the city are still rising, according to the latest figures.
Yet the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, the MSP for Aberdeen Deeside and North Kincardine MSP, owns a house and a flat in the city. While Flynn is the registered landlord of the flat, his Westminster register of interests said he had made no rental income from the property.
His Shetland colleague Hannah Mary Goodlad, also owns a flat in Aberdeen – the ownership of which was transferred to her in 2018 – in addition to her house in the isles.
Housing and rural depopulation
Many of Scotland's rural and island communities continue to experience depopulation, with parts of the Isle of Lewis, Caithness and Sutherland, and Dumfries and Galloway seeing their population shrink by more than a tenth between 2011 to 2021, according to Scotland’s Rural College.
Housing shortages have been cited as a major factor by experts and residents alike. The Scottish Parliament Information Centre says rural areas tend to have much higher rates of second home ownership than the national average.
While just one per cent of Scotland's houses are second homes, this number increases to six per cent in Argyll and Bute and the Western Isles. Some residents in these areas say they become ghost towns for parts of the year due to the prevalence of holiday lets.
Two of the newly elected MSPs own holiday rentals in areas particularly impacted by these issues.
The Dumfries-based South of Scotland Reform MSP, Senga Beresford, owns a two-bed coastal cottage in nearby Carsethorn, which is being offered out to let for more than £1,000 a week in the summer.
Dumfries and Galloway declared a housing emergency in 2024 and promised to consider the need for short-term let control areas in the region as part of its action plan.
Calum Kerr, the former Borders MP, was elected in Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale. In addition to a home in Peebles, the SNP politician owns a six-bed holiday let in Achiltibuie, Wester Ross, which is typically let out for around £1,200 a week.
In October last year, Highland councillors agreed that a short-term lets control zone should be considered to cover all or parts of Wester Ross, where more than a tenth of houses built in recent years are now short-term lets – more than double the Highland average.
Highland Council quadrupled council tax on second homes from 1 April this year.
Other new MSPs may also hold additional properties, but we were unable to confirm whether some were owned by politicians or their namesakes. MSPs may also own property via registered companies, or benefit from property portfolios owned under the name of a spouse or other family member.
We presented our findings to every MSP named in this piece and offered the opportunity to comment both to them and their parties.
An MSP must register an “interest” – including any property that they own or receive income from which is not their main residence – within 30 days of being sworn into the Scottish Parliament. The ceremony took place on Thursday 14 May.
Parliament is then required to publish an update to the MSPs’ register of interests within 30 days of receiving the information.
At least six returning MSPs own multiple homes, according to their registers of interests from the previous parliamentary term. They include former housing minister Paul McLennan, Labour’s Claire Baker and Tory Murdo Fraser – both landlords – and Tory Aberdeenshire estate owner, Alexander Burnett.
McLennan said the property was bought for the sole purpose of letting to his in-laws, who pay the exact amount of his mortgage payments.
MSPs with multiple homes ‘part of the problem’
Land and housing campaigners argued that MSPs with multiple homes were contributing to Scotland’s housing crisis.
Tenants’ rights group Living Rent said it was “disgusting that while so many of their constituents struggle to make ends meet or live in poor quality, unaffordable homes”, many MSPs are “making huge amounts of money” from property amidst a housing emergency.
A spokesperson added: “No one who owns a second home or a holiday let can possibly understand the housing crisis, let alone have a plan to fix it. This next parliament needs to combat the housing crisis, not contribute to it."
Dr Josh Doble, of Community Land Scotland, agreed that some MSPs appear to not grasp “the severity” of the housing issue and were “part of the problem”.
Housing shortages are “driving depopulation” in some rural areas, particularly tourist hotspots, which were “particularly plagued by second home ownership”, while other areas “face severe housing shortages from short-term lets and monopoly land and property owners,” he claimed.
"No one who owns a second home or a holiday let can possibly understand the housing crisis, let alone have a plan to fix it. This next parliament needs to combat the housing crisis, not contribute to it." Living Rent
“Young people are frequently unable to stay in areas where they have grown up, house prices are often completely divorced from the economic reality of the local area, and existing housing stock is woefully underutilised,” he said.
Doble cited compulsory sales orders, which allow authorities to force long-term vacant or derelict land and property to be sold by public auction, and increasing the availability of land for community-led housing projects, as possible ways to tackle the crisis.
While his group backs council tax hikes on second homes by local authorities, land campaigner and former MSP Andy Wightman believes the measure will be ineffective as multiple home owners will “in most cases be able to afford the extra local tax”.
MSP landlords “have a clear vested interest in the law governing residential tenancies” while those with second homes are “denying others the opportunity of having a first home,” Wightman claimed.
“For many years I have argued that second homes should be subject to planning permission as a change of use”, which would allow planning authorities to decide whether residential accommodation should be converted to holiday homes.
“This is already the case in Wales and should be adopted in Scotland,” Wightman added. An SNP spokesperson said its MSPs “will ensure all appropriate information is declared in their register of interests”.
Keep this reporting independent.
No billionaire backers. No corporate agenda. Just public-interest journalism funded by readers.
Karin is The Ferret’s co-editor and has reported on people, power and planet for the UK’s leading outlets. She co-founded our Community Newsroom in Glasgow and is interested in participatory approaches to journalism. Audio is her favourite medium.
Jamie is an investigative journalist who writes on issues such as illicit finance, dark money, political influence, land ownership, nature, the environment and far right extremism. He loves puns but has yet to use them in his reporting.
Paul is an investigative journalist with a focus on the environment, energy and climate change. His work has been featured by Channel 4 News and the UK’s leading newspapers. When not Ferreting he can be found walking and listening to podcasts.
High end dinners are a fraction of over 29,000 lobbying meetings in the last parliamentary term. But campaigners argue that because the lobbying spend is not declared, their significance is underplayed.
Scotland's information watchdog has ordered the release of hidden details of Angus Robertson’s meeting with an Israeli diplomat after a lengthy freedom of information battle.
Alastair Brian
Karin Goodwin
Alastair Brian
Jamie Mann
Jamie Mann
