Nab yourself a new home in an Edinburgh public toilet for just £200k
Feeling flush?
BY VICKY ALLAN
FANCY making your starter home in a public toilet for a cool £200,000? If you do, you better get your skates on, as there are just 10 days left until the closing date on the great Edinburgh public toilet sale – a mass public facility sell-off that sees five former lavatories up for grabs for conversion. We all know the housing market is crazy, but prospective buyers are currently queueing up to view eight rather rundown loos in the capital with plans to convert their new buy into flats or even cafes, and real estate experts have suggested the more prime sites will go for as much as several hundred thousand pounds.
Edinburgh City Council, which is selling the buildings, says there has been a “good level of interest”, though it won’t give figures for offers as it says this is “commercially sensitive”.
When the Sunday Herald went along to view the one of the sites on London Road during the week, it looked a small bus had off-loaded for a rest stop. About 15 potential buyers were queueing for a viewing. One family arrived in the hope of using the conveniences but were turned back with the warning that they were no longer functioning.
One viewer frowned as he examined the walls and fittings, saying: “All I’m seeing is problems – just so much work.”
A local woman declared an interest in converting the toiler into a community cafe. A retired academic was eyeing the building as a possible home “for myself and my wife”.
Whoever buys this will bring a new and very different life to a site that since the 1960s has been a relief stop and, in the past, a cottaging spot for gay men.
The building could now be converted into a cottage for two. And all in a lush, green location as well: London Road gardens, designed by William Playfair in 1819 and built as an informal recreation space for New Town residents. That said, locals don’t all see the charm in the site. London Road – along with public toilets in Middle Meadow Walk and Hunter Square which are also for sale – have long been considered a bit of a blight.
Comments on a public survey regarding the closure of the London Road toilets, included the following: “The toilet is notorious locally as a place to buy, deal and use drugs.”
The council has offered no price guidelines or “offers over” suggestions, leaving prospective buyers to speculate and get their own valuations. David Alexander of estate agent DJ Alexander said he expected the unlikely properties to be very popular.
“They’ll sell them,” he said, “and they will get good prices. There is no doubt. People will buy them, but with a view to making a bit of money buying it, knocking it down, building a few houses. It’s a win-win situation.”
Among the other sites likely to achieve the highest price are the loos on Brandon Terrace, perched on the Water of Leith and the edge of the New Town and just a skip from the Botanical Gardens, as well as Canaan Lane, in the upmarket area of Morningside. The latter, said Alexander, offered enough space on which to build several new properties. Both of these, he envisioned, would go for £200,000 or more.
Prospective buyers may look at other public toilet conversions across Britain, among them the most original loo conversions there’s been: a noodle bar in Devon, a dog-grooming parlour in Portsmouth, and a recording studio in Camden.
Selling off loos is all part of modern living, it seems. We live in an age of vanishing conveniences. A report by the British Toilet Association, published last month, found that nearly 1,800 facilities had been closed in the UK in the last decade.
Public toilets are being wiped out as local councils sell them off or close them down because of squeezed budgets. Public toilets are being flushed away in the era of austerity.