Potential move to Edinburgh

[susanjc9]

We currently live in the US but my husband is Scottish and is flying to Edinburgh for a job interview in the next few weeks. I am a bit worried about us finding a rental property as we have 2 small dogs. We need to find a garden flat or small terrace house. We would prefer Morningside, Newington, or Stockbridge. How hard is it to do this? He will probably move over before us and then we would come over a few months later.

I also heard that even if you get a property in the catchment it is still really hard to get into the schools. We are looking at Boroughmuir, James Gillespie and Broughton. Does anyone know what school she would go into if they were full? I am totally stressing about the schools and finding a pet friendly property. Is it even worth considering the job? I feel like I'd hate for him to pass up such a good opportunity.

Can anyone give me an idea on how much is typically spent on things like gas, electric, water, cable, 3 cell phones, car insurance and council tax for a 2-3 bedroom flat or house? Also cost of groceries for a family of 3. In the US we probably spend more than $1000 a month on utilities. I'm trying to figure out how much rent we can afford.

Why is it so hard to find an unfurnished property - in Glasgow they seem to have a lot more nice houses to let. I don't think we could swing paying for private school as we will still have US expenses.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Good grief that's a lot of info you are looking for!
Our two bed flat £1500 a year for council tax. Gas and electric together is £100 a month. The areas you are looking at won't tend to have a terraced house. The city centre is dense is tenement flats rather than houses. The schools you mention are all good but not the only ones to consider. If you didn't get a place you would get on in the next nearest school with a place, and then move over when one came up (that's assuming you are applying to your catchment school). The dogs are a bit of a liability for someone letting their home, but not impossible I'm sure. Call some letting agents and ask. Are you wanting to rent as it's short term or just as a step before buying? If you can jump straight to buying you could sort the dog issue out easily!
It is a lovely city and well worth giving it a try.

Thanks for the info. We were planning on renting for a year to make sure we like it before selling our house in the US. We would also like to live in the city for a year and then would maybe consider moving to the suburbs. The house prices seem so much more expensive than Glasgow, where I found really nice houses that were 300-400k and a comparable house seems to be 500 and up! That seems so high.

Unfortunately you will find that you won't get as much for your money as you would do in the States even with the dollar being strong at the moment.

Can I ask what age your children are as that can make quite a difference in getting a place in catchment.

My daughter would will be 14 in January so if we moved in the spring I was told she would go into S2 and S3 in the fall. She would be one of the older kids but that would probably be better since the curriculum difference from the states although she is ahead here academically.

Her year group are likely to move up into S3 in May or at the latest June, new year starts in August after the break but classes chang earlier.
Edinburgh is more expensive than Glasgow indeed, but then it's a lot nicer

That's a challenging year group to get into as there will be minimal movement. As a start I would phone the schools you mention to see what spaces they have and look to rent in the those areas and go from there.

What Athens said, when we moved here we found a school with space and worked back from there. The place won't be confirmed till you get here but you can probably narrow schools down to 2 or 3 with spaces that you like the look of and DC could get to easily enough from an area you're prepared to live in.

You are looking at some of the most desirable schools and desirable areas to live so it will be more expensive. And it might take a while to get a place in the school even if you're in catchment, by which time you might well decide it's not worth moving child.

There aren't many small terraces in those areas, not much between tenement flats and lovely villas. There are upper/lower villas where a big house has been split in two, but don't think they'll come cheap and everyone wants the garden flats - what about a flat near a park?

Or cast the net a bit wider and look at more affordable areas and/or areas with more mid-range housing stock, newer build or ex-council.
You might find a colony flat with a little outside space. Colony flats are back to back, so downstairs faces one way and upstairs faces the other way and each gets their own small front garden.

You might get someone to accept you as a tenant with dogs if you offer to increase the deposit or pay for a deep clean after you move out. I suspect you will need to work at this and get a letting agent to help you, I don't think your perfect property is going to present itself.

For perspective, when we re-located all my English colleagues kept telling me how cheap the property must be in Scotland. We sold a 3 bed house 3 minutes walk from a train station that went directly into London in 45 minutes. We bought a 2 bed second floor flat in Morningside. But we love where we live and we're happier than we've been for years.

We're from England and it was a nice surprise to find out that Water is included in your Council Tax in Edinburgh :)

We are currently renting in Morningside. Unfurnished flats v hard to come by. We are paying £1,200 a month for technically three bed although one of the rooms would only take a single bed. We are paying huge amounts of council tax. You will struggle to rent with dogs I think.