Where to start - housing for 18 year old!

[notanearlybird]

Hello - first time posting and hope this is okay to ask here. My eldest child -18 - will need to move out in September to start an apprenticeship. I'm feeling overwhelmed knowing how to search for affordable, safe housing in a city we don't know. Also, I'm wondering whether to start with something temporary (thinking AirBnB) in the hope they meet people to share with once the course starts - or is this unrealistic? Will all the 'good' accommodation be snapped up. Any tips at all appreciated - websites to use/timescales/things to avoid. Thank you 😊

https://m.spareroom.co.uk/ seems an obvious place to start?

An apprenticeship is a job with training. It's not like being a student where's there's 1000s of young people to shack up with.

An AirB&B will be very expensive. I'd start with spareroom.co.uk to look for a house share. If you say what city people may be able to give you local recommendations of sources.

I haven’t got experience of this but if it’s in a university city I’d start by looking at private student accommodation. There are loads of purpose built halls in my area that take students from different colleges rather than being assigned to one uni. I don’t know if apprentices are eligible but I’d make enquiries.

Yeah, it's not like student halls/student flats are the norm for this type of training. So he may not be sharing necessarily with others the same age.

But he could of course could end up making friends and moving in with them, it's just not a given kind of thing.

Thanks all. I've had a quick look at my.spare room and I guess we need to bite the bullet and go to see some places. It makes me nervous who he might be living with and whether the area is safe. He's likely to be coming and going alone to start with. The apprenticeship is an amazing opportunity but I wish he was moving into a uni campus type situation to start with.

Top tip PiggieWig. I had no idea private student accommodation was a thing. Lots of options to explore which look much better set up for young people alone 🙂

It may be tough apprenticeship wage in first year can be low depending on industry.

When I was 16 I started my training in a town some 50-miles from home so had to lodge during the week.
My new company gave me a list of families that were willing to take in trainees so I stayed with one of them (often friends or family members of head office staff).
Was a first step into the real world, a job and living independently (during the week anyway😆).
Maybe the company your DS will be working for can offer something similar?

When I turned 17 I bought a motorbike (already had a moped) and would occasionally travel daily instead of lodging.
This, along with working at the local office (where I would eventually be working) and occasional courses in London (a train commute) made me thoroughly independent and unafraid of the big wide world.

@Nourishinghandcream makes a great suggestion - is his apprenticeship allied to a college or university for the qualification? When I did a foundation degree at an FE college they had a list of local lodgings and I found a room that way with a nice local family. I shopped and cooked for myself but we would watch TV together in the evenings. I’ve also used Spare Room several times with success (both as a lodger and as a landlord).

I work on our company’s apprenticeship scheme. We do put people in touch with other apprentices ahead of time if they ask for it and some of them make groups and go into house shares. Others use the private student accommodation in our town which is a bit more expensive but does save any dramas of sharing with strangers or sometimes people drop out in the first couple of months!

My child moved out for an apprenticeship.

We both went to look at rooms in a shared house ( none which were suitable). He kept in touch with estate agents, and when something suitable came up, they let him know and he leapt at it. It was quite close to his start date, but that's just how the market worked.

He ended up in a nice place with young professionals like him. He's still friends with some to this day.

Will he be working so have to pay council tax, if so bear in mind that if he shares with students he could be liable for council tax on quite a big house, he would get the 25% off but the house could be a high band.

Good point about the Council Tax. I hadn't thought of that.

I just had a look at the halls in my city out of curiosity and some of them are promoted as being for key workers and apprentices, so I think he’ll be okay.

Wouldn't he feel a bit 'odd man out' if he was in student accommodation? Everyone else would be sleeping late, able to socialise at odd hours