Moving from cheap neighborhood to commuter distance of Edinburgh, overwhelmed with the options.
Looking to move close to Edinburgh with my partner to go back to uni for postgrad. Currently own a house in a cheap neighborhood in NE england, roughly valued at 77.5k (but I expect we may struggle to sell with a flag nonce next door). Both going to be out of work by the time we move which might make things tricky. As I see it we have three options.
Try and find a private rented place that accepts students, may be tricky with no references but could probably get family to act as guarantor. Feels like an expensive option, realistically looking at about 1200 pcm plus bills which would start to eat into our savings quite a lot by the time we finish a masters course and then (hopefully) find new jobs.
Student accommodation, share a studio apartment. Could be pretty cramped and maybe test our relationship, but probably the cheapest option with bills included, and probably reduced travel costs. Would maybe make sense to keep the house for a little bit with this option.
Have about 55k savings, maybe 35k equity in the house, and theoretically we could get a mortgage of around 50k on the basis of benefits (PIP and carer's allowance). All combined is just about at the borderline where we start to see properties listed for sale in the areas we've been looking (around Livingston, maybe just out into Fife). Obviously timescales could be an issue, but if we could make it work I feel like it's probably better to own "something" rather than to be burning through 15k savings in rent, time in the market is better than time out of the market and all.
What would you do?