Buying a croft or a house on a croft
Three different things are advertised as a croft for sale, and which one a listing is matters more to a buyer than the price does.
What a croft is
A croft is a small agricultural holding held under crofting tenure, which is a body of law of its own rather than a local variation on ordinary Scottish property law, and the Crofting Commission regulates it. The islands carry a large share of the total: of the 26,214 holdings in the Commission's own open data on 15 September 2026, 6,740 were in the eight Outer Hebrides parishes: 1,466 in Stornoway, 1,096 in Barvas, 1,083 in South Uist, 762 in Uig, 666 in Harris, 624 in Lochs, 546 in North Uist and 497 in Barra. Of those, 6,072 were tenanted and 367 owned, with 244 marked not a croft and 57 part tenanted and part owned.
Tenanted or owned is where to start, and an advert does not always make it clear.
A tenancy, an owner-occupied croft, or a decrofted house
A croft tenancy is a lease. The tenant does not own the ground; they hold the right to work it and to pass that right on. A tenancy offered for sale is an offer to assign the tenancy, and an assignation needs the Crofting Commission's approval before it is yours.
An owner-occupied croft is bought outright, the land genuinely owned, but it stays under crofting tenure, and the statutory duties set out below fall on an owner-occupier crofter as they do on a tenant.
A decrofted house and garden is the third case, and the one most likely to be advertised as an ordinary house. Decrofting is the formal removal of ground from crofting tenure, and once it is done that ground is bought and sold like any other. The word croft in an address settles nothing either way, so ask which of the three a listing is before anything else. Everything advertised here as a croft is gathered on the crofts page.
Assignation, and what the Commission looks at
Assigning a tenancy is an application, not a private arrangement. A tenancy can be assigned to one natural person only, and never to a company or an organisation. The Commission works to a set of published rules it calls parameters, and aims to decide an application meeting them all within 16 weeks. The incoming tenant has to satisfy each of these:
- they live on the croft, or within 32km of it, or will move there within 18 months;
- they have a clear plan to cultivate the croft or put it to another purposeful use;
- they have the skills that plan needs;
- the landlord has not objected, and neither has the crofting community.
The outgoing tenant has to tell the landlord in writing that the application is being made, and the Commission states the consequence of not doing so: an assignation made without notifying the landlord may be open to legal challenge later.
Buying an owner-occupied croft is a shorter road but still not an ordinary purchase. The change of ownership has to be notified to the Commission afterwards, and the croft has to go on the Crofting Register kept by Registers of Scotland, Form A where it is not yet registered and Form B where it is. Each application carries a £90 fee.
Decrofting
The commonest decrofting a buyer meets is a house site and garden ground, and the Commission again works to published parameters with the same 16-week target. Those parameters are that the area being decrofted is 0.4 hectares or less, that no other building on the land could be used for crofting or agriculture, that enough access remains to the rest of the croft, and that the landlord has not objected where the croft is tenanted. Where the applicant is a tenant crofter, the tenant or their nominee has to buy the land within five years for the decrofting to take effect.
Why this matters at the point of buying: a house that has not been decrofted is still part of a croft, and the tenure, the duties and the Commission's role all reach it. Have your own solicitor confirm it against the title and the registers rather than against the advert.
The duties, which come with the ground
Both tenant crofters and owner-occupier crofters are under statutory duties. They must be ordinarily resident on, or within 32 kilometres of, their croft. They must cultivate it or put it to another purposeful use, which the Commission takes to cover horticulture, keeping livestock, growing crops and planting trees. They must not misuse it, and they must not neglect it, with neglect measured against Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition standards. A tenant needs consent to use the croft for something other than cultivation; an owner-occupier does not, but the residency and cultivation duties are the same for both.
The practical reading for anyone buying from a distance is that a croft is not a holiday base you visit. Somebody who does not intend to live on it or within 32km of it, and does not intend to work it, is taking on a duty they are already in breach of. The 32km allowance is wider than it sounds, though, and another purposeful use is a real option, so the question is worth putting to the Commission before ruling a croft out.
Paying for it
Ask a lender and a solicitor about finance before you offer, not after. Which of the three things above you are buying changes the question completely: a tenancy is a lease rather than land you own, an owner-occupied croft is land under a tenure a mainland conveyancer may never have met, and a decrofted house and garden is an ordinary title. This site has not verified how any particular lender treats croft land and will not guess at it. Put the question to a solicitor who does crofting work, and to the lender. For how an offer is made, and the tax on it, see Home Reports, offers and missives.
Where to check
Two registers exist and they answer different questions. The Commission's own Register of Crofts is the working record of who holds what: it is searchable by an individual's name or address, by holding or croft name, by register number, by common grazings, by parish or by township, and it is updated every 24 hours. The Crofting Register, kept by Registers of Scotland, holds the mapped boundaries, but it does not yet cover every croft. Of the 26,214 holdings in the Commission's data on 15 September 2026, 11,575 carried a Crofting Register number; of the 6,740 island ones, 4,167 did.
Neither register replaces the missives stating exactly what is being sold. If it is ground rather than a house you are after, the land and plots page carries what is advertised as bare land, and the full list carries the rest.
Sources
- Crofting Commission, about us — what a croft and crofting tenure are. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission, assignation of a croft tenancy — one natural person, the parameters, the 16 weeks, notifying the landlord. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission, decrofting a house site and garden ground — the 0.4 hectare parameter and the five-year rule. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission, crofters' duties — residency, cultivation, misuse and neglect. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission, change of ownership notification — Form A, Form B and the £90 fee. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission, search the Register of Crofts — what can be searched, and the 24-hour update. Checked 15 September 2026.
- Crofting Commission open data — the holdings file, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Every count above was taken from it on 15 September 2026, and it changes daily.
- Registers of Scotland, the Crofting Register — the register that holds the boundaries and maps. Its page refused an automated request on 15 September 2026, so nothing above is quoted from it: the coverage figures are counted from the Commission's own data instead.
Last checked 15 September 2026. Every source named above was read on that date, and rules, rates and timetables all move, so check the current position before you rely on a figure here. Corrections to hello@outerhebridesproperty.co.uk.