Edinburgh Letting Agents
Recently I found myself looking for a new flat to rent again. The Edinburgh property market being what it is, this happens with irritating regularity, and every time it happens I seem to have lost the letting agency bookmarks/contact info I compiled the previous time.
While there are a few pages that collect together links to letting agencies, none of them provide all the data I want, and most of them are advert-filled horrors. So I decided to make a page myself, partly as a aid memoir and partly hoping that other people might find it useful. The main information I’m interested in here is: Phone number, website address, whether the site is any good, and whether the agents are any use.
So here it is. I’ve summarised some stuff about the various agents that I know about and tried to provide more detailed impressions of the ones I’ve actually used. Obviously, I haven’t rented from all of these people, so that’s where you come in! If you’d like to add a micro-review to this page, or let me know about an agent I’ve missed, please email me. I’m mainly interested in Edinburgh property, but if I get a load of contact about other cities then I’ll include them too.
A couple of points to keep in mind about all of this:
1) Letting agents are, without exception, infuriating, sociopathic scum. They vary by exactly how much they suck, but with all of them it’s best to go in with an ultra-confident attitude and never show any sign of weakness. It’s possible to make them jump through hoops for you, but it’s an acquired skill. That being said, some of them just aren’t worth the time at all. Pick your battles carefully.
2) Their sites tend to not be updated frequently enough, so you’ll quite often find that the property you’re interested in has already gone. I’d have thought they’d link their website database to their in-house master list of properties, and so automate the whole process of updating the site, but I guess that would require them to hire a halfway competent web programmer. Your best bet is often to phone them and ask if they have anything similar to a property you like the look of on their site.
Ignominious Mentions
The only totally negative review so far comes for Edinburgh Property Letting. Wibble says:
“Edinburgh Property Letting is run by two guys out of one of their back rooms. They’re highly dodgy and a pair of pricks. Avoid.
In general, I think that smaller agencies are much more of a gamble, since you’re likely to know less about them. EPL was a /tiny/ agency.”
So, you know, consider yourself forewarned about them.
| ESPC |
| Phone: 0131 624 8000 Fax: 0131 624 8570 |
|
The Edinburgh Solicitors Property Centre doesn’t let property directly, but instead aggregates data from several other solicitors and agents. It produces a weekly newspaper, released every Wednesday and available from most bank branches and letting agency offices. It’s pretty useful, but you have to move fairly quickly after it comes out, as places tend to go fast.
Their website is pretty braindead. It takes way to many clicks to get to the data you want, doesn’t easily let you browse using tabs or new windows, and rarely includes photos of properties. |
| Letting Web |
| Phone: N/A |
| Another site that aggregates property from a list of other agents. They have a huge amount of stuff, but their site is pretty annoying. Ideally, you’d want to be able to quickly link from a property on this site to a full description on the agent’s own site, since they tend to include more details and photos. Unfortunately, they don’t let you do this, and only provide email details for the agents, which forces you to copy/paste/munge that to get their website address. (I made a Firefox bookmarklet to automatically do this, but I think it would work better as a context menu extension. If I ever get around to making a proper version of this, I’l post it on this site.) |
| CityLets |
| Phone: N/A |
| Another site that doesn’t let directly, but collates properties from other agents. They don’t have quite as much stuff as the previous 2, but the website is much better. |
| The Letting Service |
| Phone: 0131 226 6969 |
|
This was the most recent company I used. For the most part they haven’t been actively evil, but they do tend to just ignore things if you don’t keep hassling them. They have a lot of staff, so if you have to call them about a problem then make sure to get the name of the person you speak to, since when nothing happens and you phone back they tend to say that “no-one here can remember that issue being raised, do you remember who you talked to?” It catches them out when you actually can remember.
Their website’s actually pretty decent. They list all of the properties on one page and most of them have a few pictures. Another plus point is that you can just walk into their office straight after seeing a place, put a deposit down, and the place will be secured for you. Most other agencies I’ve used have faffed about at this point, and there was always a chance someone could get in ahead of you. |
| Trinity Factors |
| Phone: 0131 447 9911 Fax: 0131 452 8303 |
| The website uses the same layout engine as The Letting Service, and is similarly decent. Haven’t used them yet though. |
| Alba Residential |
| Phone: 0131 447 9994 Fax: 0131 446 0009 email: mail@albaresidential.co.uk |
| They have one of the larger property lists in Edinburgh, and their website is reasonable. I’ve known people who thought they were great, and people who despised them. Are you an optimist or a pessimist? |
| Central Letting |
| Phone: 0131 662 8100 Fax: 0131 225 6148 |
| The website uses the same layout engine as Alba. Nowhere near as many properties though. |
| Dove Davies |
| Phone: 0131 228 3999 Fax: 0131 228 4999 email: enquiries@dovedavies.com |
| It’s been a while since I dealt with them (back when I was still a student,) but they seemed reasonable. The initial process of getting the flat was somewhat convoluted, but they were reasonably quick at fixing things. Their website seems to have got a lot better than the last time I visited it too. |
| Ryden Lettings |
| Phone: 0131 226 2545 Fax: 0131 226 2472 email:lettings@rydenlettings.co.uk |
| Passable website from what I’ve seen. Most ads have photos. |
| Cullen Property |
| Phone: 0131 221 1818 |
| From what little I’ve seen, they don’t have that many properties, and very few have photos. |
| Broughton Property Management |
| Phone: 0131 478 7222 Fax: 0131 478 7227 |
|
Looks fairly promising. Lots of property and most ads have several photos and the whole thing’s fairly easy to navigate.
_ladyp_ says: Broughton Property Management are friendly but completely disorganised, and if you need something fixed you’ve had it. I’ve had a couple of other people mention multiple-month long waits to get things fixed, so this looks like one to avoid. |
| James Gibb |
| Phone: 0131 229 3481 |
| Comparatively small number of properties, and the website was designed by a colourblind sadist. This sort of site is the reason that modern web browsers can override document specified colours/fonts. Unfortunately, even that doesn’t totally work as lots of the text and colours on the site are actually horkin’ great .jpgs. Monkeys. |
| Gladstones Property |
| Phone: 0131 551 6030 |
| Not many properties, and another site who’s designer got too carried away with their colour palette. |
| Jenners |
| Phone: |
| Very few properties when I looked at it, but lots of photos, and reasonable descriptions. |
| D. J. Alexander |
| Phone: 0131 558 3000 Fax: 0131 558 3005 |
| They use the same site layout and search system as Alba and Central Lettings, and have an ok selection of property. Apparently have pretty high agency fees though. |
| Zone Letting |
| Phone: 0131 315 4811 |
| They seem to specialise in those modern indentikit lego houses that are slowly turning everywhere into nowhere. Also, unless I’m missing something, there’s no way to just search for places in one city. I guess it assumes that I might want to move to Glasgow if I found the right flat… |
| Click-Let |
| Phone: 0131 552 4045 |
| Small selection of property, but an ok site. |
| Crichton-Stewart |
| Phone: 0131 220 4817 Fax: 0131 226 2135 |
|
Not that many properties when I looked at it, but a reasonably well designed site.
lou_11 says they’re “Good, if a bit snobby.” |
| Albany Lettings |
| Phone: 0131 229 3999 Fax: 0131 229 4023 |
| They put all of their property, both for sale and for rent, on the same page, which is a little annoying. Other than that, they seem to have decent descriptions and lots of photos. |