Southside Property Management
1 review across 1 property
✓ Positives
⚠ Red flags
Properties managed
All reviews
Maintenance
5/5
Communication
5/5
Deposit
4/5
Property condition
The property was reasonably tidy on arrival. However previous tenants hair was still stuck in the carpets of both bedrooms. There were scratches on various walls and surfaces, but nothing major. A few tiles in the bathroom were cracked and the shower curtain was mouldy at the bottom upon arrival, but we were going to replace that anyway.
It does have its issues, like one bedroom being significantly smaller than the other, we circumvented this by moving the single bed from the boxroom into the living room one weekend and used the box room for clothes drying/storage (if you do this, get a dehumidifier, trust me). Southside were actually very chill about moving the bedroom into the living room and the person inspecting the property said he expected us to eventually do that anyway.
The kitchen and fridge have ample storage, we didn't end up using half of the cupboard space.
Maintenance & repairs
Immediately after moving in my flatmate and I noticed the electric hob was tripping fuses in the flat. Southside contacted an agency who came and fully replaced the hob very quickly.
Our 2nd maintenance issue was that the washing machine wasn't draining properly and had flooded the kitchen. Workmen came to the property the first time and "fixed" it, only to leave and have the kitchen flood again.
Our 3rd maintenance request was regarding the hot water heater which controls the kitchen tap water, this wasn't functional for the last month of the tenancy despite reporting it, nobody ever attended to fix it and it wasn't fixed by the time our tenancy ended.
Communication
Southside's communication was acceptable, they kept is informed with plenty of notice for routine inspections (these happened around every 3 months or so and lasted no longer than 5 minutes)
Deposit
As both tenants of this flat were first time renters, when it came time to vacate the property Southside were pretty useless in explaining the steps we had to take to get our deposit back. We weren't aware that we had to go and action the deposit return request ourselves first, despite several emails asking for an update on the return of our deposit.
Eventually when they communicated, they sent a file for deductions which included:
- A whiteboard (tenant left personal items behind). This whiteboard was in the property when I first viewed it, and belonged to the landlord. - Cracked bathroom tile. This was there during the initial viewing and I proved so with videos that I took that day, showing the cracked tile before we moved in. - Mirror taken off the back of a door. The mirror was secured into a hollow door with raw plugs and fell off when closing the door a week after moving in. It was not safe to put back on. We reported this and explained it to a member of Southside staff when they visited the property 3 weeks after our move-in date.
After a lot of back and forth we got the majority of our deposit back.
Location
Transport Links: Albert Street is a great place if you want to be reasonably centrally located. You're a 5 minute walk to Leith Walk turning left out the stairwell and a 1 minute walk to Easter Road if you turn right. Both Leith Walk and Easter Road are incredible for catching public transportation. There is on-street parking outside but you can only do this if you have a Edinburgh Council parking permit for the zone. It's not residents parking. Living in this property without a car is absolutely feasible.
Safety: My flatmates work van was broken into once and then stolen from outside this property. I personally never felt unsafe in the property or in the surrounding streets. There are a lot of pubs surrounding the area and a lot of those people use Albert Street as a thoroughfare to get home, so at night there is sometimes a lot of drunken shouting, but we never had any problems. Even before or after football games when fans would come down the street, they never caused any bother.
Convenience: Albert Street is a super convenient area to live in, with all the public transport, Lidl at one end of the street and a Sainsburys at the other, and two corner shops it's great.
Amenities
There is a Lidl at one end of the street, a Sainsburys at the other, two corner shops (one across the street from this flat), pubs on Easter Road a minutes walk away and many other pubs no more than 5 minutes walk away.
Neighbours
I had nothing but positive interactions with everyone in the stairwell. Other than the sound of the heavy front door slamming occasionally, there wasn't really any offensive noise. On a couple weekends the person above would have folk round and play music, but so did we, more often than them, so it wasn't much of a problem. The noise was still minimal with the windows closed and normally quietened down by 11ish.
A lot of people in the stairwell also have dogs, including the person directly opposite the flat door, the dog is very friendly, well behaved and doesn't bark.
Overall vibe
Living in 75/6 Albert Street was great. It was my first flat, shared it with my good friend and made endless memories there.
Every room other than kitchen and bathroom face the street. The street is a perfect rat run coming from the east into town so Albert Street has a lot of car traffic at all times of day, sometimes it can get quite noisy but the flat is pretty well soundproofed so it didn't effect sleeping or anything.
Advice for future tenants
Video every imperfection as soon as you get the keys, ideally during the viewing.
We did have a mouse sighting during our first week but wrangled it out into the stairwell, we didn't see it again.
Move the single bed from the box room into the living room if you're not too bothered about having a living room. If 2 people are living here then eventually the flatmate in the smaller bedroom will get pissy about living in a cupboard.
