Top Tips for Finding a Student House

Seeing as you’ve probably never done anything like it before, finding your student house can be really stressful. Follow these tips to be on your way to making sure you find the house that’s right for you.

• Go private: Not essential, but personally I’d say it’s best to go private rather than through an agency. This way, you save money as you don’t have to pay agency fees.

• Look around several houses: Even if you think you love the first house you view, if you haven’t seen any others, you’ll have nothing to compare it to. Make sure you do at least a few viewings to get a feel of what level of quality, value for money and so on you should be expecting.

• Don’t rush: Obviously you’re going to want to get a contract signed ASAP to avoid being stuck without anywhere to live, but don’t rush into anything until you’re sure it’s what you want to do. You need a happy medium between speed and carefulness!

• Chat to the landlord: Make sure you talk to the person/people who own the house to find out what they’re like and what they expect of you as tenants. A reasonable landlord who you get along well with and doesn’t restrict you too much is pretty important. Some landlords have crazy rules like not allowing guests to stay over and prohibiting you from putting blue tack on the walls! Mine, on the other hand, say that for as long as we live here, it’s our home, and so (within reason!) we can treat it as such. Obviously there are always going to be restrictions when you’re living in a place that doesn’t belong to you, but just make sure these are reasonable

• Chat to the current tenants: If you talk to the people that live in the house, you can gauge what they think of the landlords and the house itself, how quickly their problems get dealt with, and so on. This could be useful in informing your decision.

• Read the contract carefully: VERY important! Read the contract and get as many other people as possible (parents, siblings and so on) to do so in order to spot any catches the landlord neglected to tell you!

• Budget: When you’re told how much the rent is, make sure you find out if any bills are included, and when deciding whether you can afford it or not, remember you’ll have to pay extra for gas, electricity, internet, TV licence and so on. Halls are normally all inclusive so you don’t have to think about those things, but it all changes once you’re living in a house!

• And finally: Don’t lose heart if you don’t get the first place you wanted. When I was looking for my house, we got really let down by someone who said we could have first refusal once we’d viewed the property, and within less than an hour had someone else sign the contract. We were really upset at the time, but turns out the place was actually really horrible (despite us thinking it was perfect at the time!), and our viewing later in the day turned out to be a much better place, which we ended up living and are happy enough to be staying here for another year. Even if it seems like you’re never going to find anywhere, there’s almost always somewhere to go, even if it’s not exactly what you were originally hoping for.