1st Choice Property Management

There are a lot of horror stories about the landlords from hell circulating around Edinburgh. 1^st Choice don’t quite rank among the worst of these, but I have to say that my experience of them leads me to suspect that they perhaps not the most reputable of letting agencies.
In person, the staff are friendly, and, of course, up until the point that you sign the lease, apparently very helpful. As soon as you’ve metaphorically signed your soul away (or at least committed yourself to a year of paying rent) the helpfulness ends. When we moved into our flat, not only were we short of a set of keys which the agent had apparently «mislaid» and kept promising to drop round but never did, we also discovered that the flat was in a state of complete filth, despite our agent’s assurances that it had been thoroughly cleaned. Just to put this in perspective, we weren’t just being pernickety — my flatmate actually found a bloodstain on the wall next to her bed!
There was also some fairly urgent maintenance work that needed to be done, such as dealing with exposed wires in the bathroom and mending broken panes of glass, which it took 1^st Choice a month to get round to. In general, the most annoying thing about them is their unreliability — they say they’re going to do something, but weeks later, and after several increasingly frustrated phone calls, it still hasn’t been done.
That said, these are typical gripes that apply to a lot of letting agencies, and for the sake of an awesome flat, they’re probably worth putting up with. If you are renting with them though, I suggest you make sure you know your rights first and are prepared to harass them in order to get anything you want!