Where should dd look for student accommodation in London

[Rascalls3]

My dd and her flat mates will soon be looking at year 2 accommodation. They are nurses and need to get to Waterloo, the Chelsea and Westminster hospital (South Kensington) and St.Georges hospital.
They are currently paying around £170 a week for Waterloo halls and would like to keep to this price range if possible.
Somewhere relatively safe as placements start and finish very early and late.
Can anyone recommend anywhere to look? They are not big party animals so somewhere a bit quieter would be good. Good public transport essential. Many thanks.
Oh and if anyone has experience of when to start looking that would be great too. I know it is much later in the year than other uni cities.

I would start with Gumtree. Also, I would expect to increase that budget by quite a bit I'm afraid as private rentals won't be subsidised and they need to be central.

accommodation for students.com, rightmove students, UofL housing, spareroom.com and gumtree. you could also try the facebook accommodation pages for the nearby unis.

U of L accommodation guide warns students to be wary of gumtree as there are quite a few scammers out there (presumably subletting illegally?)

As a student in London over 15 years ago, I was paying that for accommodation (which wasn't particularly nice and sharing with 3 others) in zone 2 and zone 3 - sadly, costs have gone up a lot of the past 15 years. What they save in rent cost, they will pay in transportation. Zone 3 south London may be a good place to start looking - anywhere on the overground train routes are their best bet. If safety is a concern due to earlies and lates, they need central and that is very expensive (unless they share bedrooms/make other concessions) - look at places other people wont want, like flats over shops

I would try a look on the Northern Line south of Waterloo. Clapham would be safe IMO.

There is also Kennington , Stockwell, which I don't know too well. So you can go south on tube to St George's and north to Waterloo or up to embankment and change for Chelsea and Westminster. C&W is a wee way from the tube so they might have to look at buses from but they would anyway unless they lived on the doorstep (which would be v expensive.) Clapham has enough in the way of places to go out albeit not walkable into Covent Garden etc (which I guess they are used to) but if they want a bit quieter then maybe that's OK.
So assuming 4 of them @ £170 pw then £680 pw so about 2,750 ish per month. Just did a quick Rightmove and it looks doable (caveat I don't necessarily know all these roads personally but once they start looking they would get to know where they are happy.

If it's private rental then they will have to pay during holidays so my figures may be too generous if they are just currently paying term time iyswim and you'd need to rework based prorata and depending on how many of them they are . Also private rentals IM(limited)E of doing it , in London, tend to be a shortish lead-time between signing up and moving in but you might be better getting more up to date advice.

Anyhow - long way of saying - one suggestion is Northern line south of Waterloo but north of St George's stop (I think Tooting Broadway)
The other thing which I guess they will have done is to ask the current year 2 and see what worked out well.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E85282&maxPrice=2750&minBedrooms=4&maxBedrooms=4&propertyStatus=all&includeLetAgreed=true&_includeLetAgreed=on&googleAnalyticsChannel=renting

Good luck

Apart from my caveat about year round rental, as dinky says transport costs will be more also utility bills. So they really need to work out their budget first. But that part of London was just a suggestion of what might make sense from a location point of view. Apologies if it turns out to be too expensive, but in London expensive is a given

Agnes that is all really helpful thank you. I am in China at the moment and the Internet is a bit tricky (only Mumsnet is working well! ) will pass on all the information to my dd to work through. Five of them would like to share but they know this could be difficult. I think Clapham would be perfect if cost wasn't an issue!

Clapham is extortionate! Most people I know who are students live in places off the tube and get the bus- parts of camberwell,Peckham, Brockley.....otherwise I second Oval (slightly cheaper than Kennington) and Stockwell

Would Colliers Wood work - cheap, near St George's and northern line to Wloo?

I would say Tooting. If they look round the overground station in Tooting they can walk to St George's and the Northern Line but they have the added bonus of the rail line to Wimbledon where they can pick up the District Line to South Kensington. Someone on our road always rents their house out to St George's medical students. They are great neighbours because they always seem to be working so hard and are very quiet. They could find a 3-4 bed house for under £2000 a month, I reckon, probably even about £1700.

Thank you all. Very helpful. I can't even get a map of the underground to see where these places are at the moment, but will have a look when I get home. Four of them are at the Chelsea and Westminster (including dd) Only one at St. Georges. All have classes at Waterloo. I imagine that towards St.Georges was always going to be the affordable option though!

I agree with both happy and titchy, i.e. bus routes will open more and cheaper options , and going south of st george's e.g. collier's wood and commuting to the other two will help. My gut feel is that 5 sharers will be more problematic than 3 or 2 and they might be better splitting into two groups.
The only other idea I have might be to look at the train stops going out of Waterloo East, given they can get everywhere from Waterloo. But I don't know those areas.
Anyway just ideas - I advise you strongly to listen to other ops who sounds a bit more clued up and realistic than me

Don't touch Waterloo East - it's a nightmare with London Bridge building works at the moment.

x post , in which case Waterloo east probably not the best idea if most are C&W