At home with a real ESPC buyer: Rosie Peppiette

With beautiful sea views, easy access to the city centre by train, bus or car and picturesque countryside walks, it’s no surprise that lots of first-time buyers who want homes with more space are moving to the historic seaside town of South Queensferry.

Rosie Peppiette and her partner Jess started their house hunt last year, viewing several homes in Edinburgh city centre before realising that properties in out-of-town areas like South Queensferry opened up their property search as they tend to be more affordable to buy and offer more space.

Rosie says: “We looked on the ESPC website and viewed a few houses in central Edinburgh and then began to look outside of the city centre to see what we could get for our money. We saw our South Queensferry property online and after that we sacrificed a city centre location as it was hard to go back to viewing smaller spaces.

“The ESPC property search is great, and we viewed four properties advertised with ESPC – booking in viewings is very straightforward. I love the number of filters you can add on ESPC – we wanted a house instead of a flat and a garden so we added those in.”

Rosie and Jess loved the South Queensferry house as soon as they saw it, with their favourite part being the views of the Firth of Forth bridges from every room in the property.

However, several weeks of tough negotiations followed after the couple put an offer in. Rosie says it was “invaluable” having a solicitor estate agent to help with the process: “It was a daunting experience. The negotiations to purchase the house weren’t straightforward and took a few weeks. We took a lot of advice from our solicitors at Gillespie Macandrew as there were lots of parts to it that made it a complicated purchase.”

Rosie and Jess got the keys to the house in October last year and started a series of renovations. They are saving up to redo the kitchen and in the meantime they have been painting and adding panelling to the bedrooms and home office. The garden is on a slope which deterred a lot of buyers but with the help of her stepmother who is a garden designer, Rosie is confident they can tackle it.

“We got a good feel for this property and it ticked all the boxes we needed. It had the right level of project to it. I could visualise living there and where we’d put our own mark on it.

“The garden is really steep and on a hill. It has a great view of the bridges and the Firth of Forth – people who viewed the house were put off by the slope, but we were excited to tackle it.”

Rosie has some advice for first-time buyers: “If I was giving my friends advice it would be to make sure you love the property and are happy with what you are paying for it.

“Your first port of call should be to contact a solicitor estate agent and have important documents and a mortgage in principle organised so you can start putting offers in right away.”

Rosie adds: “Don’t get ahead of yourself when making offers on a property. We were emotionally invested in this house. The Home Report was quite high so we didn’t want to overpay wildly. When you consider mortgage rates and the cost-of-living crisis, houses cost a lot of money.

“Moving is expensive so the biggest lessons I have learned are about finances – get advice from a solicitor on what overpaying is. “Do your research in general – find out about the area and the neighbours on the street you are living on.”

ESPC magazine

This article appeared in the February 2023 issue of the ESPC magazine. Find out more about the ESPC magazine and read the latest issue online.