The Lemon Fool

Planning to spend a week sightseeing and walking with my family in Kyoto in Oct 2018. There will be 3 of us and we are looking for a serviced apartment which is relatively close to central Kyoto. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
busybee

Wonderful, and that sounds like a ideal time of year to visit, missing the over-whelming summer heat/humidity.
In cases such as yours I'd check Tripadvisor. I used to live in Tokyo and visited Kyoto but that was 20 years ago now. Things change fast there and even if I'd visited a couple of years ago I'd still start from scratch and cast a broad net to see what's on offer.
Picking a random week in October I came up with these search lists (I hope perhaps the URLs might bring up what I see for you):
Ignoring hotels for now, under 'Kyoto Specialty Lodging'
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g298 ... otels.html
and under 'Kyoto Vacation Rentals'
https://www.tripadvisor.com/VacationRen ... ntals.html

But toggle the various options, read some reviews and see what reviewers say, note the location map and take it from there. Japan is never cheap but there are ways to seriously trim some of the costs, so some research beforehand will likely pay dividends.
I'd also have a good dig around on the JNTO-London site https://www.seejapan.co.uk/