WWBU to purchase DD expensive university accommodation?

[ThreePounds]

This isn't some twisted bragging thread, BTW. We have been saving since she was born.

She will be going to London in September for university and we are pretty set on a lovely studio apartment that's in student accommodation. It's just over £400 a week. We can afford this.

My mum thinks it's a bad idea. I never went to uni, so I'm not sure what experience she has, hence I'm asking here. She thinks she needs to 'learn' that's it's not easy or necessarily 'nice' to live alone, etc. etc.

DD has a part-time job herself and isn't expecting at all.

WWBU?

She's doing adult nursing, so will need peaceful sleep!

Yes, would pay for the 3 years.

@grannytomine even if she didn't have a studio, she'd 100% have a bathroom, she would much rather shit in piece than not have to clean!

And if you can afford it and it's what you DD wants then why the hell not?!

Thinking back to leaving DD when she started uni she looked miserable and lonely in her room. She phoned me that night she had been out in the grounds and they had all been playing on her space hopper (she was so glad she took it as it broke the ice.) The boys from her flat put her in a supermarket trolley and raced her round the campus. I was glad she wasn't sitting alone in a studio.

Student nurses don't necessarily need peace and quiet all the time but they do need friends and peers for support and opportunity to off load about their studies/placement. It's a tough course and it is the networks of fellow students that student nurses find most beneficial in the first year.

Yanbu. You can afford it and DD wants it so I'd go with that rather than your mum/us.
I know everyone says about sharing and having a social aspect but a big reason I didn't go on to uni was that I dreaded the thought of sharing and the party side of uni. Your DD sounds like she'd make friends anyway so it wouldn't worry me if she wasn't sharing.

A genuine question for you OP - how much other money do you have?

For a three year course you're looking at paying around £60,000 for accommodation on the figures you've given. For three years.

Whereas £60,000 would be a heck of a contribution to buying her somewhere after she graduates that would put her on the housing ladder for the rest of her life.

I know she has to pay something for her rooms so you wouldn't have the whole £60,000 to give her, but you could still have a tidy sum for later.

I agree with memyselfandaye, if I were in your position I would look to buy somewhere and she could take over the mortgage payments when she graduates or you could sell the property and hopefully get back your initial investment or give the proceeds to your daughter then to set her up.
I don't agree with PP who say it is socially isolating not being in halls. My parents put a deposit on a house for me when I went to uni so I never lived in halls and I made lots of friends who I am still in touch with almost 20 years later. When I visited my friends living in halls in other cities I hated it! They were all noisy, dirty and constantly having silly squabbles. I'm not saying all halls are like this but you know your daughter best and halls aren't the only way to make friends at uni.

Suspect bathrooms may be one area where there are genuine gender differences! IME girls spend HOURS in the bathroom, and even if you're not particularly into grooming it's a pain waiting an hour to go to the loo.

Someone mentioned next year - typically it isn't the parents who sort out next year, it's the student. Sometime in the later terms they need to identify friends from course/societies/halls that they'd like to share with, and who have similar cost expectations and limits. Then they search for privately rented flats and houses, meet the landlord themselves, sort out the contracts themselves, inventory, monthly payments. The only thing they should need you for is (1) acting as guarantor for the landlord and (2) you need to give them an idea of budget so they can find the right cost accommodation. Then give her a lump sum or a monthly sum and she pays rent out of that. You should let her sort it out next year - it's good for building independence, life skills etc.

As for matching with other students with similar budgets - obviously friends from vastly different backgrounds can get on well, but where I studied there were some incredibly rich kids - trustafarians, parents famous industrialists etc, and a couple went into flatshares with much poorer friends and it tended not to end well for the poorer friends. I was in a group that was fairly well off (middle middle class), but not flush, so no bottles of champagne scattered through the flat. It worked much better because we all had similar expectations, tastes and budgets.

For those mentioning grotty showers, gross communal areas - modern halls just aren't like that. I have been through a lot of modern private halls up and down the country for work reasons & they're generally very nice .

"Communal facilities" means private ensuite bathroom (no sharing) and only having to share a fully equipped kitchen with dishwasher as well as a living room. It's not a grotty Young Ones style situation.

£400 will also include water, TV licence, internet, heating & electricity.

I'd not spend the money on a studio like that in first year. Other posters are right about the type of students who typically live in them - overseas students (who band together) and postgrads. I made my best friends in halls in first year - and I wasn't the going out type either. There's so much more to the university social life than going out clubbing, and she is more likely to find a kindred spirit of her own age in halls than in a studio building.

Halls will be more basic than the studio, but it's hardly going to be the house from the Young Ones. After first year she'll have her friendship group established and may well want to go into a flatshare with them - if she's as you describe, she won't be sharing with idiots, and it's very handy having someone down the hall who you can sound off to when things are getting a bit much, or who you can go out for coffee with without having to solidly arrange something.

Every autumn on here we see posts from worried parents who think their DC aren't leaving their rooms. I remember my first night at uni as clear as day - 10 years ago now though. I was the first of my flatmates to arrive, and once my parents left I sat in my room and had a little cry at how lonely it seemed, even though I was only waiting on 5 others to arrive. I wondered if I had done the right thing moving away from home. After everyone else arrived, I wouldn't have changed it for the world.

@TheDevilMadeMeDoIt - we have 70k away for a future deposit. I wouldn't want to use the money (student accommodation money) to buy her a house for the future as I actually do think it's important to have a mortgage, etc. and with the 70k she shouldn't struggle with paying off a mortgage monthly.

ThreePounds, they do have lockable doors on the loos. I think in my DD's flat they had two bathrooms (with loos) two shower rooms (with loos) and two loos. They got divided pretty quickly into girls and boys so six girls shared a bathroom, showerroom and loo, my son was in a flat with 4 others, two shower rooms and two separate loos, again no problems.

Will she be with others nurses? One of mine is a nurse, they have much longer terms than the other students and the blocks can get a bit lonely when all the others go home. Not a London uni but their uni arranged it so the block was mainly nurses so they weren't lonely when the others went off home or on holiday.

Shared accommodation would be far more beneficial in terms of learning to cohabit and making friends. Only one of my bates lived in a studio and he was definitely lonely.

I am nearly 61 and number amongst my best and closest friends some of the group I lived in hall with in my first year at uni. We used to have a bit of a moan about the lino floor and tiny kitchenette but the camaraderie of being together ensured I always had a core of good friends during my 3 years, supplemented by others on my course etc. I think your daughter might be a bit lonely in her own studio and it would be better to try a nice hall for a year then think about something else.

I like being on my own but would have hated being on my own in my final year! We were all on different courses but kept each other sane during finals, and when someone did go a little bit crazy with stress we were all there for them. We looked out for each other when ill/injured too.

My DH's flatmate broke his back in a ski accident and DH spent a year putting his socks on for him. You can't beat that close-knit friendship group.

Just had a flashback. DD was at uni for six weeks when we got a call from a member of staff who lived in the block nextdoor. One of my DDs flatmates got worried as DD hadn't been seen all day, went into her bedroom and found her with blinding headache and fever and immediately went for the staff member. She phoned me and told me what was going on and that she had sent for the trained first aiders, call a few minutes later to say they were waiting for an ambulance. Ten minutes after that a call to say paramedic was setting up IV antibiotics and she was being taken straight to hospital. She had meningitis. Extreme example but so glad she wasn't on her own, that the other girl was sensible, that the staff member and first aiders acted swiftly and of course the NHS staff.

Was talking to someone about it a few weeks later and she said they had once had a similar late night call about her DSD and by the time they got to her she was dead. Scared me rigid. DD had a week in hospital and lots of IV's, 3 bags a day I think. She hated it and couldn't wait to get out, wouldn't come home with us and went back to her flat.

Obviously rare but it can happen and at 18 they are still quite vulnerable.

Is your DD18 and have you asked her if that is what she wants?

My DD went into a new build student flat (the uni only had accommodation for first year) with her own ensuite (she hated the thought of shared toilets/showers with strangers) but a shared kitchen/living area. That was great as she made friends with her flatmates and those in the flat above and below. I think she would have felt a bit isolated in a studio at age 18 as people on her course took a while to become friendly.

Probably going to get flamed for this but is the block the studio is in mainly rented by international students? ( at DC's unis they tend to rent the more expensive accommodation).My DC have found it a bit more difficult to make friends with them as they tended to not turn up their flat drinks invites, wanted to hang out in groups together etc. for the first year or so.

You might be better buying her a flat and using the money as a deposit and getting in a flatmate to help with the mortgage - it would be an asset for the future (it could be sold when she leaves uni and if it has gone up in value it may have paid its mortgage and more) it woul be neutral or work for you rather than be lost money.

University in London is very different. No campus and students living all over London.
If its the type of private student accommodation I know about it will also have communal areas. The one I know has TV room, cinema, common room and gym. There are also organised social events if you want.
There are study areas too. So it is possible to make friends.
No life skill to be learnt from sharing a kitchen etc with untidy lazy dirty noisy people that you didn't choose to live with.
Go for it if you can afford it.
Also I don't understand the concept of making your child live in a hovel when you can afford for them not to.

I was a student nurse and lived in shared accommodation. I made life-long friends through sharing. It's also nice to go home and have other people around to talk about the trials and tribulations of the day, especially when she starts on her placements.

Although she says she wants the self-contained studio now, will she still be saying that when she comes home for Christmas, perhaps having made no friends at all?

I went to university in London and was in halls in central london for the first and third years. Flatshare in SE london for 2nd year.

I do find it a bit wierd that you will let your DD have a pretty luxurious flat to start off with and then give her a deposit, which although is very generous, by london standards, she is really going to have to have a huge mortgage to live anywhere decent, and then paying a mortgage on a nurse#s salary?

I really would think long and hard about managing expectations.

I wonder if your daughter has grown up with more material comforts than you did; hence your understandable desire to provide for her and thus your mother's concerns....

£60k just seems like an eyewatering amount to pay on 3 years rent. Student life isn't "naice" it is study and character building, otherwise you may as well stay at home and commute to college.

@octonaught we would never let her be struggling, if she needed more, we would of course help

Nurses wages aren't too bad? My niece has just graduated in science and is on 18k. She will be on 26k, to begin with. I'm not saying it's amazing but definitely not too bad!

The people on our floor in halls who lived in the studio flats were usually married couples, religious (and wanted an alcohol free space) or mature students. They didn't mingle with us. The people who were our age and in the studio flats seemed very lonely and separated from the everything.

You learn a lot from even just one year of sharing and many people meet life long friends from sharing in halls. It would be a shame to miss out. Many halls, like the unite developments which have these studio flats have en suites in all the double bed sizes rooms anyway, so all she would have to share would be the kitchen if she didn't like the people she was placed with.

The principle is fine. However, £1600 for a student studio flat (or any studio flat, actually) is ridiculous. I've paid less for a large 2 bed flat in zone 1.

I think the trouble with health courses as well is that she would benefit from students around to study with. Things like clinical skills are hard to learn on your own.
Good idea and very well intentioned but I think the real problems will be when she graduates and can't afford to live near her job. I think you sound lovely though, but I'd look at reducing the cost of the studio flat. I also think at that age she'd benefit from having people around.