Buying a house, letting accommodation

Property websites

Solicitors

http://www.sspc.co.uk/
Essential viewing - select the local site for your area

Solicitors and Estate Agents

http://www.s1homes.com/
Scottish property and real estate throughout Central Scotland. This site and the SSPC site have more listings for Scottish properties than any of the sites below and both are well worth a look.

Mostly estate agents

http://www.your-move.co.uk/
http://www.propertyfinder.co.uk/
http://www.propertywindow.com/
http://www.property.scotsman.com/
http://www.thehousehunter.com/
http://www.fish4.co.uk/
http://www.itlhomesearch.com/
http://www.assertahome.com/
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/

Note that many of the above are dominated by purely estate agents and the same property will likely appear on many of the above sites. Solicitors tend to only put their properties in the SSPC guides, so there is minimal overlap with other sites.

http://www.edinburghnews.com/
(Edinburgh Evening News, Edinburgh area only)

New Homes

http://www.new-home-locations.net/

Essential viewing if you want a brand new house, the other sites and publications are generally hopeless at distributing information on new homes.

Lettings

http://www.lettingweb.com/

Mortgages

The following sites are good places to look for a mortgage

Easiest to use

https://www.comparethemarket.com/mortgages/
http://www.moneynet.co.uk/
http://www.ukmortgagesonline.com/
http://www.charcolonline.co.uk/
(the search engine behind Tesco Finance, Interactive Investor)
http://www.moneysupermarket.co.uk/

Also worth trying

http://www.firstmortgage.co.uk/
http://www.yourmortgage.co.uk/
http://www.mortgageseekers.co.uk/

http://www.moneyfacts.co.uk/
(search has to be started from the beginning if you change anything)

Solicitors

The majority of property in Scotland is sold through solicitors offering an estate agency service. The Scottish Solicitors Property Centre site at http://www.sspc.co.uk/
has links to the various local centres around Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow, Tayside, Highlands, Perth, Aberdeen, etc) which cover properties for each particular area. Each site has a convenient computerised matching service.

This system is really convenient but is so efficient it can lead to a large number of people chasing after a small number of highly desirable properties. You can sometimes pick up a bargain by specifying you are interested in all areas.

Estate Agents

Solicitors have a particularly high market penetration in the cities, and sell over 92% of Edinburgh properties for instance. However, in more rural locations and in smaller towns, the balance is not so one sided and may be around 50/50 split between estate agents and solicitors in these places.

Timber Frame Houses

There is information on buying a timber frame house at
http://www.scotframe.co.uk/

Free house prices for Scotland, no need to register either! http://www.nethouseprices.com/

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