Page 39 - August 2023

AT HOME WITH

What the
doctor ordered

We chat to GP Tracie Plant about her move from a tenement in
trendy Hillside to a family home in Ratho, which she found on ESPC.

hen GP Tracie Plant and her surgeon “We first bought our home five years ago – at
husband decided to expand their that point we had no children, and wanted a
Wfamily, they wanted to switch city- city centre flat,” explains Tracie. “We decided to
centre living for a property somewhere more buy a fixer-upper, as we couldn’t afford to offer
suburban, with room to spread out. They’d over at the rate other properties were selling
made their first home in a bright, stylish for at the time. It was a total learning curve,
tenement flat in Edinburgh’s trendy Hillside – a from start to finish.”
stone’s throw from Holyrood Park and Arthur’s
Seat, and minutes from the city centre and After transforming their two-bedroom couple decided to start a family – just in time The couple fell in love with the pretty village of
Easter Road. tenement into a stylish, modern home, the for the pandemic. “We found ourselves in a flat Ratho, in the north-west of Edinburgh, which
with a baby, and only had a narrow window ticked all of their boxes, and decided to put
to move in,” says Tracie. The couple, both their flat on the market and secure their future
medical professionals, needed to find a home family home.
that suited all their requirements, and quickly –
including the right location. “We became interested in Ratho, and before
Christmas I saw a place I loved, but they wanted
“We do out-of-hours on-call work – I’m a GP a cash buyer so we didn’t get it. I set up an alert
and my husband is a surgeon, so we needed to on espc.com because everything was selling
be no more than 30 minutes from the hospital.” really quickly, and visited the website daily
because properties go up earlier on espc.com.
We put offers in for a few properties in Ratho,
and eventually found our new home. It’s a
new-build with a south-facing garden – I miss
the high ceilings and big bay windows of our
old flat, but we are much warmer in this house,
have more space and we’re close to my in-laws
for childcare, and the hospital for work.”

As first-time sellers with demanding jobs,
Tracie and her husband were keen to find a
solicitor estate agency that would make selling
and buying as easy a process as possible. “We
spoke to a few places and they seemed a bit

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