Cousin's daughter has ended up with the box room at her university shared house

Most student accommodation beyond the first year is private rented accommodation and nothing to do with the Uni. Groups of friends go and look round and find a house, with one agreement which they all sign and are all liable for the rent.
Most houses don't have equal sized rooms so someone gets the smaller room and often there is one very small room. Some one has to have it. Students work this out at the time amongst themselves. Sometimes they draw lots for the rooms, sometimes they adjust the rent according to rooms amongst themselves, sometimes so done voluneteers for the small room.

It sounds like an agreement was made a year ago and she agreed to take the small room, however the decision was reached. All 4 students will have been working out their finances based on a quarter of the rent. If that was the agreement, it is not reasonable at this point to ask to pay less, which means others will pay more. I can understand why they have resisted that idea. it doesn't seem especially mean to me.

I agree with others that she just needs to put up with it now and make sure she avoids this happening in future. Perhaps she will spend more time in the living areas than the others as her room is small. Perhaps she will sometimes work at the dining table if it gives more space. It would be reasonable to use the communal spaces more. perhaps she can ask one of the others if she can keep a few bits in their rooms.

With these things, it is all to do with how you approach them. If she has demanded a rent reduction, having previously accepted the situation, that is never going to go down well with the others. Asking nicely and in friendly way to store stuff in the others rooms or in the communal area is more likely to met with cheery acceptances.

And if these guys are truly unreasonable, even if she hasn't been, then perhaps they are not really her friends and she should live with others next year. But perhaps they actually are decent people and are good friends and she just needs to learn to assert herself at the crucial moments when rooms are being divvied up and bills decided. It is too late now.

sleepyhead has mentioned this upthread but surely this should be a HMO and not a joint tenancy.

Is this housing on the university accommodation list?

Each room for students should be rented as a single room, not all lumped together on a joint tenancy. It is a HMO (house of multi-occupation) dodge of extra responsibilities that the landlord should be fulfilling because he/she needs a HMO license.

Taken from CAB website

"What is an HMO?

There is a complex legal definition setting out what an HMO is. However, in general terms, it is a building where more than one household lives and shares facilities.

A single household is where members of the same family live together, including unmarried couples. For example, if you lived with a friend and a couple that is three households"

HMO makes it fair as rooms are usually different sizes and are rented according to their size. Your niece's first port of call needs to be the accommodation officer.

Basically if everyone ran off owing rent on a joint tenancy then one person can be held accountable for everyone. So a house share of 8, 1 person could be liable for all 8 people's rent.

As students, each student should hold a separate tenancy agreement for that one room. A decent landlord would do this. That way if someone drops out of uni but remains in the house, council tax becomes chargeable to the landlord. He can evict just one tenant from their one room and the landlord doesn't lose the income on the other rooms. Harsh, but they are "student" lets. Council tax is exempted for students. So if you stop being a student the landlord gets charged council tax in an HMO.

Perhaps karma will help out and one of the (apparently) more desirable bedrooms will turn out to be the one with damp/mould.

She will soon learn. This is an important lesson in assertiveness for her.

Not a big deal, we've all been there. In my uni years I had the small room twice and the big room twice. It evens out in the wash.

What if someone has a stereo, a wardrobe full of clothes, drawers full of clothes, a desktop PC, a TV and a games console?

Then they will realise how restrictive the box room is and perhaps discover some empathy.

If they reduce the rent for the box room, what's to stop the others then saying "now that room is cheaper, I want it" and she ends up in the biggest room but paying more than initially planned? Would that be fair on her? And rotating rooms through a year? That's just way too much hassle for anyone to really contemplate as they'd have to move all of their things into the box room, then back out again a couple of months later to let the next person in. What if someone has a stereo, a wardrobe full of clothes, drawers full of clothes, a desktop PC, a TV and a games console? That becomes a big move for the sake of 2 months. I'm afraid its her own fault for agreeing to it without thinking about the impact.

I shared a house with friends after uni and we agreed to rotate the box room - I had the second "go" of it and couldn't be bothered to move after that - my boyfriend then moved in and one of the others moved out but we stayed in the box room - sometimes it's the nod (of your cousin's daughters flatmates) to fairness that matters.

I shared a four bedroom flat as a student - the rent for the tiny bedroom complete with high bed (desk and wardrobe went underneath, it really was tiny...) was less than the other 3 rooms.

While I agree that it's a PITA, the thing is she did agree to the rent sadly - I'm guessing that the others will have budgets to stick to, and it's not fair to expect them to pay more simply because she's changed her mind. As others have said, I think it's one of those things she has to chalk down to experience.

I always felt sorry for whoever had DS's uni room after him. The furniture and state of the place was disgusting, so we decorated, and bought it bedroom furniture from home, sofa, rug, curtains. It wasn't the size, it was just filthy.

It looked fine when we'd finished, but obviously he took all the stuff back when he left - leaving the manky old furniture that was previously installed.

Can your niece fit a desk in there? - if not, that surely would have to be accommodated in the living room.

My favourite room in shared houses was the smallest in the house - and I had had the biggest the year before too. You do need to be organised but it can work well.

Poor girl - she was probably carried along with the excitement of new accommodation and made the offer to have the box room without thinking it through properly.

Wasn't usual in my day to vary rent according to room size though and I can see why her flatmates would be annoyed at what is effectively her going back on the agreement.

But as others have said, box rooms can be cosy (cosier than a large junk-filled attic in an unheated house in Scotland which I spent a year in!). How about getting her something nice for her room to try and make it a bit more special (nice bedding/cushions/pictures etc?)

It is fairly normal these days for students who are friends with each other to adjust the rent downwards slightly for the smallest room. DD shared two houses with 5 others then 2 others and the rent was adjusted by agreement on both occasions. In the larger flat they drew straws for the rooms and in the smaller flat they just agreed who had what room. If students are friends, and reasonable, well brought up people, this is what they do. I think the real problem here is that these other students are not really her friends. She trusted them but she is being treated less favourably.

Leaving could be a real problem now because where will she find another room? Who else is she friendly with? Obviously she will learn from this and not be so accommodating in future. It is not normal to accept what is dished out to you and students DO have to have a desk in the room these days. All stories of past hardships are a bit wide of the mark. When it comes to paying bills the OP's Cousin's daughter should pay a lesser amount based on the size of her room when compared to the others, and pay no more than is reasonable. At least that will make her feel better and she must stick to her guns!

I've ñever known anyone pay less rent for having the smaller room. Didnt happen when I was at uni. Everyone paid the same.

I don't think she has any moral case. The others thought she was happy with it, she said it was ok. Why should they now be worse off because she's changed her mind? Finances are tight for students.

As PPs have suggested, can she have some storage elsewhere in the flat, even if that means loss of space in communal areas? If her flatmates are being nasty, can she say that's what she needs to do in order to not have to move out, rather than asking their permission and being turned down?

One flat I lived in had a massive storeroom with nothing in other than the electricity meter and a step ladder. It got totally taken over by the flatmate who had the smallest bedroom - she had almost all her clothes storage in there, so her bedroom (which was actually smaller than the storeroom) only had her bed and desk, so she had somewhere comfortable to study, and it didn't affect anyone else. But that was an oddly-shaped flat... She also paid a bit less rent - £15 less than the total rent/4 flatmates, so the rest of us were paying an extra £5 each month than we would have been otherwise. Seemed fair and worked for three years - no one wanted to move room even when we discussed it each year!

I also had friends who decided to make the large living room into a bedroom and use the tiny boxroom as the tv room so none of them had to squeeze into a tiny room. That seemed to work well too, but may not be feasible in a house rather than a flat.

It would be different if she hadnt seen the room but she did and agreed so I can understand her flatmates being annoyed at her change of mind !

FWIW i agreed to share with a close friend and 2 of her previous flatmates. I couldn't get to see the flat they chose (was in another country at the time) but was happy to trust them.

I unexpectedly returned to uni earlier than the rest and so was the first to receive the key to the flat, i arrived to find that you had to go through one of the bedrooms to get to the kitchen and one bedroom had 2 beds and was also the living room, leaving only 1 decent bedroom - guess which i unpacked in ?

When the rest arrived it caused a great row as they had obviously expected me to have the kitchen / bedroom. There was also great talk about bedroom rotation but i refused.

Eventually the landlord agreed to put up a stud wall so harmony returned and although we didnt share together the following year i have remained friends with my original close friend.

Its all a learning experience and hopefully once term starts she will be to busy drunk to care :)

Had she requested less rent when they first took the room, I'd have completely agreed. However by asking now when they've moved in, the others may well have already budgeted/not be able to pay more. So I think it's a bit unfair to ask at this stage and be pissed off when they say no.

Our student house had different sized rooms, although none I would really describe as a box room, although the smallest was much smaller than the biggest, IYSWIM. We all paid the same amount of rent, although we did draw lots for the rooms out of a crisp packet in the pub

It depends what facilities are available in the communal rooms really.
I remember when I was a student one girl negotiated a lower rent for a box room it was so small there was only room for a bed and chair and this seemed fair.
She didn't need a desk as she wasn't a student.

Student's accommodation with no heating AND the student accommodations officers had been round to check it before hand and listed it as suitable

Herinf = heating and possibly the weirdest autocorrect ever.

Oh yeah gunz I had one place with no herinf and another where it really didn't seem to make any difference at all. Happy days