Relocating to Scotland- Yay!

[Merrilegs]

Hello

I realise this has probably been done to death but my husband and I are relocating to the Edinburgh area this Summer. I am coming home back to Scotland! Yey!! I have 2 children who are 12 and 10 this year. As the eldest would be starting in S1 we would like to buy in a catchment area for a decent secondary school. Some of the schoools look great but house prices around are rather expensive!! Can you suggest areas where the catchment area is not as expensive but the school is decent? Also we are quite happy to rent initially if we have to, can anyone recommend any rental sites or decent estate agents that do decent rentals.

Thank you so much

Portobello's new high school is being built this year and there are reasonable houses around there. It has a fairly decent reputation. There are some affordable houses around Boroughmuir (Buckstone) and Broughton (comely bank). It's always a good exercise to trawl ESPC within your price range and they tell you now which schools you're in the catchment for with each property, so you're able to do a quick search or ask around about them if you're not sure about them. I don't have school aged children but I do have lots of friends with them, and many teacher friends, and to be honest I personally feel that every school has it's positive and negative points, depending on the needs of your child. It might be worth searching for houses you like and then looking up the schools to see what 'vibe' you get from them. Re rental sites we recently rented through Retties when we had to be out of our home for insurance covered building works and had a lovely property, so you could check them out.

It's not the best school in the city but we like Firrhill and it's certainly "decent" at least.
We also really like the catchment area - foot of the Pentland hills.
And we got more house/garden for our money than we would have in Boroughmuir catchment.

Depends on your budget but most schools in Edinburgh are pretty good, the espc site and zoopla now tell you which catchment area a house is eligible for Which is good so check that out and if renting first any agent should be able to let you know the same. Good luck with your house hunt and welcome to edinburgh x

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