Flat Finding in Edinburgh: A Test of Will, Patience, and Friendship

As a first year student and a fledgling adult, flat finding in Edinburgh was a series of persistent horrors. While my friends in other universities had already signed a lease in January, I was relieved that Edinburgh allowed me some time to actually think of who I wanted to share a space with every day. Then April rolled around and it was time to get a move on. To counter my previous dramatics, I can confidently say that it was character-building at its finest, and a way for me to reflect on what truly matters at university.

The first step of the process was answering the very simple yet complicated question of who to live with. Now in this aspect I got lucky. I ended up living with two friends I already lived with and love dearly, and when another friend's plans fell through, I launched a vigorous recruitment campaign to bring her into our ranks. For others it is not so simple. You're in a new city with people you've known for 6 months. You might get along with them swimmingly, walking and talking to lectures, going to the pub together. But living with someone is a different story, where you have to think about what kind of lifestyle they lead, or even just the energy they bring into a space. Some people are there for bursts of entertainment or shared experience and sharing a probably quite tight space with them is a whole different ball park. Everybody has different standards for cleanliness, noise, clattering pans at 3AM and so on and so forth. It is hard to know these things about people after knowing them for years sometimes, so 6 months is even more daunting. Sometimes you can gather this from a conversation, or even just staying round at their flat and seeing their habits if you ever get the chance. Many don't have this luxury and scramble to be a part of a group to live with. I guess that is just part of the gamble of university.

Next you start actually looking for flats, scouring Rightmove and Onthemarket with the naive optimism that you will have the pick of the lot. You have a vision of the perfect flat, you and your friends in the kitchen laughing and cooking, and maybe even a garden to have a beer in over the summer. At first I booked viewings for everything I could find, then I started getting ambitious with this vision that me and my flatmates had cultivated. I then realised it is all about timing, so I turned my notifications on and as soon as a property popped up I would immediately register for a booking. This led me to get judged on the phone by a giggly estate agent who scoffed at my eagerness for a viewing. However, it didn't even matter how quick I was, others were quicker, and a lot of the time letting agents hadn't even picked a day to do the viewings so I kept getting ‘sorry there are no viewings available, please leave your details so we can contact you’. But I'm persistent, so I made the phone calls and waited for more notifications and got some viewings for some promising properties.

Leven Street. Midday. Me and my flatmates. The flat had a living room, decently sized bedrooms, a nice atmosphere… in the photos. When we entered I was spluttering from the dust. We looked at each other in fear of what was to come. The first bedroom was triangular shaped so the bed would've taken up the whole space. On one side of the second room there was one half of a condom wrapper, on the opposite side, the other half. We opened the window to get some air after giggling and then choking on dust. The window then rudely refused to close. This was not our flat.

If I skip ahead to a month later, we've finally found some decent flats. In fact we did find a perfect flat which we eagerly waited half an hour for the late estate agent to show up for, and pleaded with him our dire need for this property. We did not get it, despite the barrage of calls we left him and his assurance that it would be ours. After licking our wounds, we found yet another, requiring every single document and the deposit on their desk for us to secure it. This was the middle of exam season and I, for some idiotic reason, took on the role of extracting all the information I needed from everyone, including their parents. I ended up in a tiff, not with one of my flatmates, but one of their dads, despite the fact that I was preventing his daughter from a life of homelessness getting pecked by some very angry pigeons on the streets of Edinburgh. After a few threats (polite demands for some credit checks), I had spent 10 quid on printing everything and was about to take it down to secure the flat. I called in to ask if it was still available. It had been taken that morning. This was becoming a very large wound to lick.

But just as setbacks are inevitable, so is finding your footing. We got somewhere eventually, albeit not with a proper living room which one of my flatmates desperately wanted for some lovely parties and bonding time, but it had a garden and was in the highly coveted area of Marchmont.

At the end of this experience I began to reflect on why I had put so much pressure on myself to be so in control of the whole situation and I think it came from wanting to ease the ambiguity and instability that comes from this time in my life. Because when you realise you have all of this agency, yet all of this responsibility sometimes you want to maximise it, whether it is to your detriment or not. This also means if you have a bad situation, like an ugly flat, or a dodgy flatmate, you have the power to turn it into something else. Decorate together to cover the stain-ridden ceiling, or have a rant about that one flatmate who never does their dishes to one of your other friends, there is always some community to be found. Try to be kind to the people you have to live with, even if they're all stressing you out. But don't be too kind, especially with landlords, letting agents, or anyone trying to gaslight you about a mould problem. Most importantly, be kind to yourself because you probably have an all-nighter to pull for an assignment and you've got enough on your plate.

Truthfully, there is no easy way to navigate finding flats, especially in Edinburgh, but what I can say is that it's a true test of will, patience, and friendship. You will continuously have to think about who and what you want, push for it, and pick yourself back up when things inevitably go wrong, even if you sink lower than where you started. And isn't that what university is all about?