Living in the UK
Looking for a student house can be
daunting. Many 'housing lists' are released around
December/January, and if you are admitted into a University in
October that can be as little as 8 weeks before you feel you have
to find a group of friends to live with and choose a
property.
In reality there should be no rush - there will still be houses
in March - but of course the best properties do go first so while
you shouldn't rush do try and be prompt - if not you will get a
house but it won't be as nice. In London, students look
for houses between July and September.
Where to look for a
house?
Online Searching
Online resources are growing
increasingly popular to find student houses. The main
advantages are that searches are much quicker than walking around
10-15 letting agents, and you can in theory search from
properties across the whole city to find exactly what you
want.
In reality online services tend to still be
quite limited, with only a few student letting agents/landlords
in each city. One service which is of great use is
LiveOut.co.uk. The site is free and says it is
run by students, and allows you to search from around 1000 houses
each in London, Oxford, Coventry and Leamington. The site claims
that outside of London it has 90-95 per cent of letting agent
student properties in its cities online and that it has the
biggest collection of student properties for
rent in London. The resource is quite useful because it actually
seems to represent the vast majority of student housing available
in the cities it is in. At the moment it is only in 4 cities, but
the web site says it is launching across the UK this
year.
Outside of those cities the online
resources tend to have significantly less properties, and do not
represent the 'majority' of student housing. Another good
resource though, particularly to find landlords, is
Gumtree.com which has a lot of adverts posted in
many cities - although unlike the above website these are often
just short text adverts without full details of the properties
such as photos, maps and descriptions.
If you do not have a group of friends to move in
to a house with, but want to live with other people,
EasyRoommate.com has a lot of flatshares listed,
although you may find some listings out of date.
University Housing Services and Student
Unions
Your university housing service may be well
placed to help you find a house - but the quality of these
services do vary greatly between Universities. A good housing
service will maintain a list of letting agents and/or landlords
which they recommend/blacklist - this can be a good starting
point for beginning searches, or to serve as a final check once
you have found a house you like.
Bear in mind that Housing Services vary
dramatically from University to University. Some have their own
accommodation they manage on and off campus and may try and push
you into this (in some cases this could be more expensive than
the private sector), others advertise landlords through them (and
usually provide some safeguards/code of conduct), and/or others
have genuine advice centres.
Unfortunately some universities see the Housing Service as a
profit-focused department and thus do not run the Service to
provide ‘impartial' advice but to try and let as much
university managed/advertised accommodation as possible. Other
students should be able to give you a good idea of how good your
Housing Service is.
Student unions may also be able to help - some
are organized to do this, a small minority may take no interest
though. Most SU Officers should at least be able to give you
personal advice, and many will be able to help you with questions
such as where does everyone else live, when should I start
looking and so forth.
University Housing
Days
Many universities also run 'housing days',
typically in the first term of the year, providing advice
on housing. Often other external organizations might be
present, such as the police and council. At many housing days
these organizations are joined by a few commercial letting agents
- and so you can also begin your housing search at these days.
Note that choice will usually be very limited, but you should
feel fairly secure.
The High Street
Finally, you can just walk around the town
centre and pick up housing lists. The quality of these varies
between each city (larger cities generally of better quality) -
in the worst case situation you could just end up with a list of
addresses, rents and number of bedrooms, but the majority of
lists now include descriptions and photos. This is the advantage
of looking online - you essentially get all of these housing
lists, but with more information, and from every letting agent,
and can search through them to show only properties relevant to
you.
And once I've found a potential
house?
Once you've compiled a list of
potential houses - whether from online, paper lists picked up, or
some other method - you need to contact the letting
agent/landlord to arrange a viewing. In most
cases they will take you on a viewing, but in some cases you may
just be told to make your own way to the property (this is
particularly likely with agents who have the poor quality housing
lists discussed above).
At this stage, the method of search you picked above can really
start to make a difference. Decent online listings will often
have internal pictures of the property, so you can get a good
idea of the property before you go to view it. That way you can
ensure the properties you view you can seriously consider. On the
other hand, walking around 10 properties could take you 2-3 days,
and in the January rains this might not be so fun!
Either way, when you go to visit a house make sure to ask all the
right questions and look for the right problems and
features.
Happy House
Hunting!
Reference / Images
Credits:Student
Housing in the UK, Rising,
Ian
S.
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