Moving to Edinburgh

kriss_boy

My girlfriend and I are both on 15K salaries in Fife, but we both graduated 1/2 years ago so we'd like to think better jobs are around the corner. She studied and lived in Edinburgh for 4 years and loves the place and cant wait to move back should the opportunity arise.

We both live with our parents but both have 4/5 grand each saved. We've only been together 6 months but we want the same things in life and we've said that if we have another great 6 months together then a move to Edinburgh would be great fun. Id still buy a flat in fife to rent out so Id have stability should things go pear shaped in edinburgh!

So we are considering moving to edinburgh but Im concerned about the costs. Can anyone express just how much more expensive everything is? Anyone moved from Fife to Edinburgh and struggled or was it ok?

lynseyf

The cost of living in edinburgh is not anymore than anywhere else apart from buying the house in the first place.

I moved to edinburgh from west lothian 5 years ago and bought a house with my boyfriend. At the time our mortgage and council tax was approx. double what we had been paying individually so moving in together meant we were no worse off but could split things like gas, phone etc which we had previously been paying on our own. We bought our own house on a combined salary of £21k.

Food, petrol and buses etc cost the same in edinburgh as anywhere else and I use more buses and less taxis now I live in a big city. Going out costs depend entirely on you, I go out a lot less now I have my own house and can invite friends round for food or drinks. There are plenty of dirt cheap pubs in Edinburgh, they just aren't in the fashionable areas.

Unfortunately the price of houses has risen a lot since I bought my house, I don't think you will buy anything for less than about £120,000 in a nice area (by that I mean Leith or Gorgie, the real "nice areas" will no doubt be out your price range). My rough calculations mean that this would be approx. £700-800 a month mortgage plus another £100 council tax, £100 gas, elecy, phone, £50 house insurance and life insurance then food and personal expenses on top of that, you will probably have got used to a nice standard of living if you have been earning £15k and having the majority of it to spend on yourself so may have to cut back on things for yourself.

As a last point I know someone who has sold her house after living in it for 3 years and made an 80% profit, house prices (in Edinburgh anyway)still seem to be rising at a ridiculous rate despite what all the papers are saying, buy a flat, if you two don't work out sell it and you're likely to have made some cash which will help ease your broken heart

kriss_boy

Looking at flats that are 10/15 walking distance from princes street youre looking at offers over 120K for a 2 bed place. Hence why my plan is to buy something in my home town, rent it out, and rent in edinburgh. That way Im renting but getting my mortgage at home paid for me. That also means I have some stability should things go pear shaped with the girlfriend.

We had discussed renting for 3 or 4 months in edinburgh to see how we get on first, and then buying. Plus despite both being on 15K, we are both literally months away from each being on at least a few grand more each. I go up at couple of incriments on my scale next year and the equivalent of her job based in edinburgh is a few grand more. Even more if she gets a granduate job.

I wish we could benefit as much as others have with property increases but I cant see us being so luck. I mean realistically how expensive could flats get in edinburgh? I was surprised at how nice a flat you could get just 30 seconds from lothian road, at offers over 125K with 2 bedrooms. They could possibly be 175/200K in 5 years I guess.

sicker

kriss_boy, I sold a 2 bedroom flat in eh15 in year 2000 for £82000, it is on the market to-day for offers over £200,000 (no offers yet tho'). Hope all goes well in your search.

kriss_boy

sicker wrote: »

kriss_boy, I sold a 2 bedroom flat in eh15 in year 2000 for £82000, it is on the market to-day for offers over £200,000 (no offers yet tho'). Hope all goes well in your search.

I guess it all depends on the size and location.

Looks like getting something for 100K 10mins walk from the high street wont be a problem... itll just be an pretty small studio flat! So I guess we have to find the balance of price/location. To try and get something thats both reasonably big and reasonably close to the centre.

We wouldnt have a problem getting a mortgage of 150K but the repayments would be pretty big!!

Ah all these decisions! We are just going to save up and get through xmas and see how much more we have saved!

lynseyf

kriss_boy wrote: »

I wish we could benefit as much as others have with property increases but I cant see us being so luck. I mean realistically how expensive could flats get in edinburgh? I was surprised at how nice a flat you could get just 30 seconds from lothian road, at offers over 125K with 2 bedrooms. They could possibly be 175/200K in 5 years I guess.

Lol, thats what we thought when we bought 5 years ago, then you could have bought a 3 bed house in somewhere like livingston for what we spent on our first flat, now its worth approx. 3x what we paid for it. Edinburgh is a restricted market, only so many new houses can be built so prices will always remain high. I remember reading that in the 30+ years that the ESPC has been open house prices in Edinburgh had never fallen.

Of course this is only good news if you plan to sell up and move out of edinburgh at some point, if not all it means is that you will have to spend even more to get a bigger house for your next step up the property ladder

kriss_boy

Thats exactly what the plan is.

So is Edinburgh the same as fife? property goes for about 10-20% over the asking?

Is it a nightmare communting to fife and back for work? I mean do you avoid most of the traffic if your leaving edinburgh to go to work in the morning and coming home at night? Im tempted to do a few practice runs when Im off in a couple of weeks time.

I wouldnt mind commuting to Fife as I could possibly be working in dunfermline in the near future.

lynseyf

Don't know about the commute, have alwyas worked in Edinburgh since I moved here.

Houses generally go for at least 20% over I think, often up to 30-40% over
Not an expert on this and only going by friends experiences, best bet would be to check one of those websites that tells you what price houses have sold for for the areas you are interested in.

bathgatebuyer

sicker wrote: »

kriss_boy, I sold a 2 bedroom flat in eh15 in year 2000 for £82000, it is on the market to-day for offers over £200,000 (no offers yet tho'). Hope all goes well in your search.

Same postcode as me then!

Also, the population of Edinburgh and the whole of the Lothians area is due to continue increasing over the coming decade, so buying in Edinburgh will continue to be a good investment for the forseeable future. Even those areas just outwith Edinburgh such as Musselburgh have seen strong rises in price in the past 5 years as the ripple effect has spread to the Eastern side of the city causing these huge increases in values.

scooterpig

I've worked in Edinburgh for several years. I lived in the city for a few months then decided to move north to Fife. Nothing on earth would make me move back to Edinburgh.

What I found was that the costs of living were so high in Edinburgh I couldn't actually afford to do anything! The advantage of living in Fife is that the housing costs are lower and the commuting is pretty easy, which means you can leave the city behond you whenever you want.

You'll definitely get higher salaries in Edinburgh than in Fife (I got more than that in Edinburgh immediately after graduation 7 years ago).

Your 2 main areas for employment are city centre or Edinburgh Park, both of which are well served by trains and buses. I now live even further north than Fife and can get to work in Edinburgh city centre in an hour. The train from Inverkeithing, for instance, takes about 25 minutes and they're pretty frequent.