You’ve come to midway through your first year at University. The time has come to think about finding a private rented house. Here are a few key tips to get you on your way.
• Find House-mates
Unless you particularly want to live on your own and can incur the expenses that lifestyle forces upon you, you’ll need someone to live with. Most student homes consist of at least two people and at most 10 or 12. How many people you choose to live with should be down to how many people you and your house-mates are comfortable sharing a living space with. What you should also bear in mind is that the larger the house, the larger the rent and the larger the bills. With this in mind, it is best to share a house with individuals are working around a similar budget to you. Do not rush into securing your house-mates; if you start looking for a home in October of your first year with 4 other people you’ve only known for three weeks, chances are you won’t like at least one of them when you get to know them better.
• Be Patient
Student houses, in most university cities, run at a surplus – there are more bedrooms in houses than there are students. Knowing this, be patient – don’t go looking for houses to early and don’t take the first house you see, unless, of course, it is a student palace. After the turn of the year is the best time to start looking in most cities. In the big cities, you can start looking much later and still secure a home. By then you should know who you want to live with and there will still be plenty of houses still on the market.
• Decide on your budget and what area you want to live in
When looking for a house with your decided house-mates, make sure you first decide each of your maximum per-week budget on rent. If you and your future housemates can’t agree on a price-range, maybe it’s time to stop calling them your future house-mates. After deciding your budget, decide what area you want to live in. Some areas will be cheaper than others, so your budget will largely dictate will area you reside in. But, as a group, you should discuss whether you want to live near to campus, near to town, near to the station etc.
• Look at plenty of houses
Don’t take the first house you see, unless you’re sure that it’s the one for you. The excitement of securing your new home can be overwhelming, but seeing as you’re not moving into it for another 6 months or so, there’s no rush. Be sure to see plenty and to get feedback of how the landlord from the properties you see is. This can be done by asking the current tenants who live there what their opinion is or you may find that your university will provide a feedback service, where you can get average satisfaction scores of landlord’s given by previous tenants.
• Set out a pricing system with your house-mates
Sometimes, especially the more rooms your house has, the rooms may not all be the same size. Some may have single-beds, other doubles. Yet you may all be paying the same rent. To make it fairer which, in turn, will ensure a calmer home, those with the bigger rooms may want to pay an extra $5 a week on their rent, and those with the smaller rooms $5 less a week.