Midlothian Council

Property to rent in Midlothian

Midlothian is Edinburgh’s commuter belt and one of the fastest-growing council areas in Scotland. The Borders Railway put Shawfair, Eskbank, Newtongrange and Gorebridge within half an hour of Waverley, and rents across the county still sit well below the city for the same amount of space. Most of the stock is houses rather than flats, which is the reverse of central Edinburgh and changes what a landlord should expect of it.

Four things drive rental demand in Midlothian, and none of them is fashion. The Borders Railway, reopened in 2015, gives Shawfair, Eskbank, Newtongrange and Gorebridge a direct run into Edinburgh Waverley. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and the Edinburgh BioQuarter sit immediately over the boundary at Little France, drawing rotational NHS and research staff who want a short commute and a six to twelve month tenancy. The University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush campus at Roslin — the vet school and the Roslin Institute — brings a steady international intake of postdoctoral researchers and technicians. And the new-build pipeline at Shawfair, Bonnyrigg and Danderhall produces accidental landlords at a higher rate than older stock, because owners move on and let rather than sell into a slow market. Landlord registration is with Midlothian Council, and the county has no HMO cluster of any size, so almost every let here is a straightforward single-family tenancy.