Is 6 months lease typical?

Six month lease appears to be standard in Scotland. Where, I have learned recently, it is totally illegal to ask for six month's rent in advance, as I'm told some private landlords do....

My own lease was six months, and then goes month-to-month thereafter.

Now, about Letting Agents: Are they tied to only the houses they represent or are they "working for you" to find you a place based on what you are looking for and they work with all of the other landlords or management companies?   

When I look on RightMove, it looks like each house I've looked at is represented by a different company. So do I contact each of those different companies for each place I'm interested in looking at or do I get a Letting Agent who "works for me" to contact them?

Unfortunately that's one of the annoying differences over here. You can't just give the estate agents your wants/dislikes and have them crack on through a list of all the properties in your desired area. You can register with several and they will let you know what they have available that roughly fits your guidelines but they don't want to know all your nitty gritty detailed "likes". I suggest registering with all the big players in your desired area(s) and see what they can send your way.


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About distance/drive time to/from Edinburgh:  Also, when looking at the map or gauging drive time using Google Maps, I can get an idea about how far out I dont mind living but I thought I'd ask you all to get some real world experience.

I'm used to driving an hour into work during rush hour currently. Normal drive time from where I live into downtown Seattle is about 20 minutes. So based on those drive times, where would you recommend is a good "boundary" from Edinburgh City Centre to look?   Would Livingston be a good boundary point? I'm just not sure realistically during rush hour how long it would take to get from Livingston to Edinburgh. Or maybe the airport would be a better boundary?

I'm not familiar with Scotland, only been there are a tourist.  I'm in Southeast England where miles are NOT the way to figure out how long it would take to get somewhere.  My daughter's nursery is less than a mile from our house and on a bad day, it can take 20 minutes to get there.  I used to work 16 miles down a motorway and it took between 90 minutes and 2 hours during peak times.

I'd recommend using Google Maps and putting in the time you want to arrive and see the range of time it gives you to allow.  I find it to be pretty accurate.  You can change times around and get a feel for the best time to travel.  Using that, it says Livingston to Edinburgh is an hour 15 during peak time.  Remember you'll need to add in walking time on Edinburgh end from a car park to your place of work.  So that would probably put you at an hour and a half.

What KFDancer said is spot on.  Don’t forget parking will probably cost you £15 a day as well. 
What about public transport?  In London, it would be insane to drive into London as a commute, everyone takes public transport and houses are valued by how far they are from the station.

Estate agents don’t work for you and actually have interests that are opposed to yours.  Scotland is special so most of the outrageous rip offs have been curbed, but certainly keep your eyes open . 

You want to find a website like right move or zopla and use that to find flats you are interested in.

What KFDancer said is spot on.  Don’t forget parking will probably cost you £15 a day as well. 
What about public transport?  In London, it would be insane to drive into London as a commute, everyone takes public transport and houses are valued by how far they are from the station.

Estate agents don’t work for you and actually have interests that are opposed to yours.  Scotland is special so most of the outrageous rip offs have been curbed, but certainly keep your eyes open . 

You want to find a website like right move or zopla and use that to find flats you are interested in.

No one with a half a brain drives into Edinburgh! Public transportation all the way because it is way too expensive to park, if you can even find a place to park.

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Letting agents don't work for you, but in a couple of cases us having looked at flats (that we didn't get) and following up later with the agents worked for us.  A couple told us about flats that they were going to list but hadn't yet, and one liked us enough to recommend only us to the landlord rather than let it become a bidding war between us and the other people viewing. Hopefully you'll get the first flat you like though, and won't have to go through any of that.

Paying a year’s rent up front?  Like giving £15,000 or more to someone you’ve barely met?  Or ,even worse,  to an estate agent?   That’s absolutely insane.  Half the estate agents on the high street are dodgy enough to close up shop and take your £15,000 to Cuba the day after you give it to them. 

A massive risk. If the landlord hasn't asked his mortgage lender's permission if he can let the property and then falls into arrears with their mortgage payments (doesn't use the rent received to pay the mortgage); or the landlord already has a repossession order when they let it to a new tenant; or they don't even own the property they claim is theirs, then the tenant has lost their money and their home.

There’s pretty strict rules, written and unwritten for real estate and nobody is going to do anything different because that represents risk.

Strict rules? In the UK, any person can set themselves up as a letting agent or estate agent. It's why councils employ staff to to take the bad letting agents and bad landlords to court. With a new law just come in to tackle bad landords who fail to carrying out their repairs.

Americans understand the concept of being flexible and doing something unusual to make more money.  British people do not and will react with suspicion and even hostility. 

Has it ever occurred to you that the landlord demands are to do with supply and demand? Rents rise as do demands by landlords, because of high demand (people arriving in the UK and looking for somewhere to live) and low supply (number of houses available).

It's one of the reasons the Swiss voted to limit the EU's free movement to their country, because high numbers of  unlimited immigration always causes a massive strain on housing, plus schools, national healthcare systems, jobs, services, roads, benefits etc  The EU were going to take them to court over this limit they were going to impose on free movement, until Breixt happened. To try to stop the Swiss following the Brits out of the door, the EU have now allowed the Swiss  to try to relieve that pressure, by making sure that a job is offered to a Swiss citizen first now (something free movement didn’t allow). However the Swiss have now withdrawn their long standing application to be a full member of the EU and will only remain in the EEA, with these new rules of Swiss workers first.

Liechtenstein too will not tolerate unlimited immigration to their country for the same reasons. i.e. they will only allow 66 EU permits a year for those using free movement to their country and these few must have a job before they apply for an EU permit..

Supply and demand drives the market and the housing market is no different.
i.e.
Many landlords are worried that a Brexit vote will cause a fall in the rents because of supply and demand.
The financial crisis caused mortgage interest rates to be very low for a long time, yet the historic average mortgage interest rate in the UK is 8%., with the BBC calculator also warning what their monthly repayment will be on a 10% rate. Yet how many can afford to pay their mortgage on an 8% rate or higher, as rates will now start to rise again. As the rates rise and numbers of buyers decrease compared to the numbers trying to sell their homes, then supply and demand kicks in again. History repeats itself and the UK housing market is always boom and bust.

I've been reading a lot of peoples posts on here and else where and am I correct that 6 month leases are the norm?

6 months contract is the minimum. Often a 12 month contract will carry a break clause at 6 months that could be activated, to let the tenant or landlord get out of the contract.

Strict rules? In the UK, any person can set themselves up as a letting agent or estate agent. It's why councils employ staff to to take the bad letting agents and bad landklords to court. With a new law just come in to tackle bad landords who fail to carrying out their repairs.

I feel like Purple Bricks got in a bit of sh*t over some of their practices (or lack thereof), but I might be remember incorrectly.

I feel like Purple Bricks got in a bit of sh*t over some of their practices (or lack thereof), but I might be remember incorrectly.

I don't think they got into any legal problems.  But they are a poorly run outfit.  Our house was listed via Purple Bricks.  We actually were happy with that aspect of it because I don't see the point of estate agents here (they don't actively work to sell the houses, and they don't do the legal side of things, so what is their function, really?).  But the business model is "free to list -- as long as you use the referred solicitors we assign you to"... if you want to use your own solicitors, you have to pay an upfront fee to list or a more substantial get-out fee after finding a buyer (as well as solicitor's fees).  And most people selling their house via Purple Bricks do so because they're tight, so they don't pay the up-front fee.  And then they are legally bound to use the utterly horried solicitors that are part of Purple Bricks' network.

We had pre-authorization in excess of our offer, a solicitor who was prepared to work with us, and an agreed offer.  What could go wrong?  Actually, at first, nothing!  The inspection went fine and the mortgage approval was in hand within 2 weeks of our agreed offer... it was off to a smooth start.  But then we didn't get the keys until October 22nd, and for most of those 5 months we were waiting for the seller's solicitor to respond to requests for documents that they should've known were needed.

I had an open dialogue via email with the seller throughout the process, and she would frequently say she would happily pay to go with a different solicitor, but she was locked in because of Purple Bricks.  They'd already done the listing and that's how we found the house, so she would have to pay a substantial fee to get out of the contract.  And we kept thinking after each little delay that surely this was the last thing and it would all get sorted... for five months we thought that.  It was a tedious summer.

I feel like Purple Bricks got in a bit of sh*t over some of their practices (or lack thereof), but I might be remember incorrectly.

I was thinking more of landlords who haven't bothered to read the Housing laws and just give their BTL to a letting agent to manage as they think they must know these laws. But most of these laws make the landlord responsible and they are the ones who have committed a crime if the letting agent hasn't followed the law!

I guess if the landord had read these laws, then they wouldn't bother with a letting agent anyway.

I feel like Purple Bricks got in a bit of sh*t over some of their practices (or lack thereof), but I might be remember incorrectly.

This has some information on them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purplebricks

and from that link

"On 15 September 2017, Purplebricks officially launched into the USA"