Moving to Edinburgh - Where to live

[Jas8085]

Hi all,
We are considering a possible relocation to Edinburgh. We are currently in SE London (Bromley south area). Please can anyone guide me - I'm looking for areas within commutable distance to the city centre, with good schools (primary and secondary) and safe.

Thanks
Jas

If going state, start your research at secondary schools catchments - narrow down then look at primary catchments. Budget is a big factor as to where you can live in Edinburgh as does house/flat, parking offstreet/ permit.

We are going state.

The plan is to shortlist a few areas - somewhere leafy and nice just like Bromley. And then look at schools

Anywhere within the boundary of Edinburgh results in a fairly easy commute to the city centre.

I lived in Portobello for several years which I loved for the beach and community feel, especially once I had children. The schools there are pretty well regarded. I now live in East Lothian, which is equally fab and still a relatively easy commute, despite being further away.

I agree that budget is a constraint, there are many areas which would tick lots of boxes but are eye wateringly expensive. I recommend getting on ESPC and Rightmove and checking out properties within your budget and see what you like. You can then check out the standards of the local schools.

PEople would definitely be more able to help if you could give an idea of what budget you would have, and what your essential requirements are for the property.

Definitely need to know budget and style of property you like.

Leafy can be anything from Corstorphine to morningside to Currie!

Budget around 500k. For a 4-5 bed detached property. We could stretch to 600k for the right house.
Ideally within 30 min commute to the city centre.

The detached requirement is the one that's going to limit your choices I'd say as even in the nicest edinburgh areas - places like morningside for example - they arent all that common. Lots of people in Edinburgh live in period tenement flats, even quite wealthy people with families. My dd goes to school in Stockbridge and probably 90% of the kids live in flats.

For detached the areas I'd probably look at would be
-craigleith/orchard brae, feeding to flora Stevenson primary and Broughton. Mainly bungalows but big ones
-Blackhall - Blackhall primary feeding to Royal High
-corstorphine, either corstorphine primary or fox covert, feeding to craigmount
-barnton/Davidson's mains - Davidson's mains primary feeding to Royal High

• the top end of the boroughmuir catchment - Buckstone, comiston etc more than Morningside although there might be some Morningside options
• Comiston feeding to Pentland primary and firhill

-colinton

Baberton, Currie, Juniper Green and Balerno would all meet your leafy and housing requirements but would push the commute time over the half hour I think

Trinity is lovely but you might struggle to get detached, lots of big period semis and terraces instead.

If you are happy with the train and commuting the is look at parts of fife and Linlithgow too.

You can search with those filters (price, bedrooms, detached) on the ESPC website and see what comes up. People on here could give opinions then on what they think of the area! Agree sticking to detached will make it very hard.

Blatant placemarking as looking too !

You can search by school catchment on ESPC too which can be useful. I'd agree with PP who said start with the good high schools; in most cases the 'feeder' primaries are decent too (exceptions exist of course)

A word of caution - I'm not in Edinburgh anymore but friends who are tell me there is very little in the way of family houses on the market at the moment - there seems to be significantly less turnover going on than previous years thus any searches you do of things on the market won't really allow you to see all the kind of houses in an area - maybe not relevant but worth being aware of.

Ah - that's why I keep getting so many flats coming through when I specifically said I was after a house in Stockbridge type area !! ( and yes I gave them a big enough budget !)

There's really not many houses at all in Stockbridge anyway, so it's always going to be slim pickings!

Are you looking for Stockbridge school catchment, or wider Stockbridge (Inverleith, Comely Bank etc)

Budget and size?