London Universities- how much more expensive to live?

[Shadedog]

Does the extra loan students living in London can get actually cover the extra expense of living in London or will parental top up have to be upped significantly? I have a dd applying for 2022 entry and her first choice is a London uni and then a ds who will be applying for 2023 - also London. I know that many people live their entire lives in London and this question makes me sound like a bumpkin but I am anxious about supporting two of them. Both kids currently have Saturday jobs atm and expect to have to work while studying.

Of interest, which universities might they be looking to attend and what would their maintenance loan be? Imperial has very good bursaries for the low income backgrounds.

This from the UCL prospectus might be useful. I think I remember that it adds up to a few hundreds more than the London banding full loan. How realistic it is, I don’t know!!

They’re looking at UCL and UAL. I think they’re looking at about £8.5k loan in London compared with £5.5 outside. Our income is around £55k so probably above bursary level but decidedly below being able to offer unlimited support. We have 2 younger dcs too.

Those expenses seem high to me. £130 a week on top of rent but it is more expensive living as a single person. It’s the rents I’m really concerned with. I know halls of residence in other cities can be extortionate but there are often cheap options for years 2/3.

Quite a few UCL halls are £10-12k a year, but the average (by hall, not number of rooms) for self catering is about £8.5. Fiends with children going into second year seem to be getting rooms in flats for about £210-250 which I found cheering

Fiends with children going into second year seem to be getting rooms in flats for about £210-250 which I found cheering

I assume that is per week? Is that for 52 weeks a year (that makes it £13K a year) or just term time. Will landlords accept just term time?

Dc1 sharing house with 4 other students. Weekly rent is less than weekly rent of students accommodation. However this does not include various bills water, WiFi etc. And yes he now has to pay for 52 instead of 40 weeks.

£8.5 for self catered halls sounds very manageable. Somehow it’s psychologically easier to think the loan pays the rent in full and then they/we pay living costs.
Feel a bit queasy at the thought of £11-12k a year for room only plus bills plus living costs. They might realistically need £3-4K a year each from us just to pay rent plus living costs on top but on the plus side they both have a strong work ethic, can make decent, cheap meals and neither are doing STEM or placement heavy subjects so there will be flexibility with work.

Will landlords accept just term time?

Worth noting

1. Many students rent on the open market, so 9/10 month tenancies are possible, which can make it as cheap as a 12 months tenancy elsewhere, especially if you factor in lower bills. (Whatever agents say, 6 months is the normal minimum, and the London rental market is struggling so everything is negotiable. One common contract is 12 months with a break clause after 6, which allows a tenant to give 2 months notice once six months have passed.)
2. Term structures can be different. LSE switched to a 12:12:6 week pattern, in part to help academics and students from overseas. Teaching essentially stops after Easter and then UG exams early in the third term. I think Imperial may have similar. This means shorter winter and Easter holidays and a longer summer one.
3. If you sign up for 12 months, summer jobs in London are easy to come by, or indeed there are plenty doing internships etc who will be looking for a spare room for the summer months.

My dd was at uni in London. Big plus was that there was plenty of part time jobs! She did 5 to 9 I'm Boots Mon to Friday and it more than covered the extra.

I've been looking at house/flat shares for next year for DS, so I could get an idea of how much more/less it will be, I am surprised as I've found some for as little as £130 a week and some with all Bills included, on top of that they were actually quite smart places too.

Halls wise DS is quite expensive, but we think it is perfect for him. If looking at private Halls the lowest we found was around £6500.

Have you looked at the accommodation links on UCL UAL websites? to give you a rough guide?

This is a good link for living expenses for each uni, (the second table down)

www.savethestudent.org/money/student-budgeting/what-do-students-spend-their-money-on.html

The full maintenance loan in London isn't quite enough to cover rent and living costs. The UCL budget doesn't seem that off. Travel is expensive in London (around £30 a week for a travel card if they go in every day). Campus catering is subsidised but not cheap. The average house share rent IME seems to be around £180 pw (£9.3k per annum) excluding bills but that is for 52 weeks.

TBH, the full loan and full bursary at Imperial is £17k per annum, and I think that is a more realistic budget for a "comfortable" but not extravagant life (including buying clothes and shoes, and for the full year, not just term time), ie being able to afford a coffee on campus, buy a sandwich sometimes instead of always bringing a packed lunch, go the student bar once a week, go out out a few times a term, buy tickets for the big events (like Freshers' Week, the Graduation Ball etc), join clubs and societies, go out for a pizza to celebrate a birthday, go to conferences or optional field trips, pay for train tickets home rather than the Megabus.

Although it's not an extra cost, you need to bear in mind for budgeting that they will need to pay the deposit and rent for their second year house share at the end of the first year, long before they get their student loan. Also, it is hard to find a place that doesn't require a joint and severally liable rent guarantor for each tenant, which makes you liable if any of the other tenants don't pay their rent. There are insurance policy type guarantor schemes but they aren't cheap. Some landlords ask for 6 months' or a year's rent to be paid in advance if there is no guarantor.

Tutoring or after school childcare with homework supervision seem to be popular part time jobs that pay better than retail or bar work, if they can get relevant experience and it fits in with classes.

NewYear slightly disturbing reference in your link about students turning to sex work to make up the difference between the maintenance loan (too little) and their actual living expenses.

The £17k full bursary package is eye opening

As a Londoner £17k sounds an awful lot. Is this including fees? People earn less than that.

I really think corners can be cut. A lot of University accommodation is central and walkable, and central London is fairly flat, so good for Boris bikes. There is an awful lot of free stuff. Public lectures, concerts and so on. Cheap, or seat filling, last minute tickets. Trains don't cost too much if you buy in advance, or use a split ticketing site, but then there is nothing that wrong with the coach. (DD is returning from Bristol tomorrow for £6.80, which because it has several pick ups and drop offs is more convenient, and does not take much longer.) There are supermarkets everywhere, so plenty of scope to pick up cheap sandwiches, rather than buy in overpriced outlets, and students soon find cheap, often ethnic, places to eat. .

I am a landlord so agree with NewYearNewTwat. I am always astonished at the rental prices quoted on MN. I wish I got that much. The rental market is really weak at the moment, and my guess is that at the moment you can do better in London than, say, Bristol, where rents are soaring.

Tutoring is a popular one, and if tutoring UGs, which those on more technical courses can do after their first year, can be seriously lucrative. The fun one is waitering/bar at events. These are seasonal, and you can just sign up for the dates and times you want. Lots before Christmas or in the summer.

London Universities are keen to encourage UGs from the rest of the UK and offer some quite generous bursaries, Imperial especially.

blueshoes
oh I honestly hadn't really read the article had just being looking at what they budget.

That's nasty though

For travelling they can get a student oyster card and then add things like discounted 18-25 rail card(I think its 30% discount) onto it. The rail discount includes tubes and DLR.

I looked at UCL accommodation and quite a few of their halls start around £175 a week, for 39 weeks. For a small single non ensuite room. obviously it will depend on which hall is closest to were your DC wants to be and availability, the next prices up seems to usually go up in amounts between £20-30 more per week. again 39 weeks.

So lowest price 39 weeks at £175 = £6825.

Unfortunately starting prices at UAL seem a lot higher, but can varie a lot on which college they would be attending.

17k seems like over kill to me.

But I suppose we'll find out when he starts in September 🤷‍♀️

DD is at UCL. She stayed in very expensive halls.
In addition to her taking maximum available (but basic rate London level loans), we paid in 1st year:

extra for halls, which included 2/3 meals: £2352
other living expenses: £1620
Maybe £200 for other travel, her train journeys home, young person's rail card
France holiday summer 2020: £220 (flight only, she cadged rest of holiday expenses for free from friend's parents)

Luckily (ha!) my income has gone down in recent years & thus DD will get more loan in 21-22 & 22-23 than she did in 20-21.

Other people report giving their London-Uni kids £300/month in term time to cover living costs, maybe includes accommodation.

DD's rent in private flat in 21-22 will be ~£200/week, which may include utilities. We will have to see how much her loan covers & what top ups she needs.

We've quarrelled disagreed about whether any of her earnings should cover accommodation; she argues that she IS paying for accommodation via loans, the money she earns she wants to be for comforts like coffees out or hols with mates.

Her inheritance is going to be weenie.

£300 pm for living expenses can’t possibly include accommodation.

Yeah... I can see I wrote that badly.

What I mean was
Maintenance loan

• £300 pcm
• whatever student earned (up to £4k/yr?)=

might cover all living costs; no extra given for accommodation costs.

In contrast, my own adult offspring is trying to contribute little of her earnings towards basic living costs. I don't want to fall out about it but will have to make up difference to other DC, who are frugal like their parents.

Fainting at the cost of going to university in London. I have just set up a standing order for DD's 3rd year rental in Newcastle - £110 per week including bills.

Each uni has accommodation costs on their websites

this year I'm in a studio flat for 10.5k including bills for 10 months I get 10k student finance an additional 3k from uni and work an average of 20 hours weeks in my professional role alongside masters study, an ensuite is about £180 in zone 3 a week ...I wouldn't go private most houses are grim

Thanks everyone. Lots to consider. I had heard (and forgotten) that there was a bit of a brexidous which had impacted the rental market. Imperial and LSE are out (don’t do the course), KCL a possibility for dd. You have to sell a kidney round here to afford a bus fare and every time I go to London I’m blown away by the public transport but realistically I’m anticipating a lot of walking unless living further out so I guess there is a certain balancing between rent and travel costs. I have looked at the accommodation costs on the uni websites but there is a lot of variation and I don’t like the “from £….” As it reminds me of new build estate where they advertise houses from some outrageously cheap price but it’s a studio flat above someone else’s garage that was sold to the builders niece on the first day and the next price up is £300k more. Besides I was assuming uni accommodation for 1st year only would be the cheaper option, although it isn’t always in expensive cities (oxford springs to mind) and there are other considerations besides accommodation. UAL had “small single” rooms for cheap (relatively) and I saw someone on the student room ask if the small rooms had windows. He wasn’t given any reassurance. There isn’t a lot on rightmove for students atm (wrong time of year I guess) so it’s hard to gauge. I had rather stupidly forgotten that they will hopefully be working during the summer holidays which will boost their yearly earnings significantly.

There isn’t a lot on rightmove for students atm (wrong time of year I guess) so it’s hard to gauge.

There is not really a student market as such in London. A University/SU might have some registered landlords, but mainly it is a case of going into letting agents to ask if they have flats where the owner is willing to take students. In a tough property market it is a rare landlord who won't. At one point students formed the largest group for Mayfair rentals. (Overseas students, even if they are not out and out rich, will prioritise safety and proximity, even if it means sharing a room. They are paying a fortune so are here to study and want to be close to the library.) Though you might have to pay six months in advance.

Plus it is absolutely the "right time of the year". There is no committing months in advance, usually no more than a month in advance. Students hit town the same time new graduates/first jobbers, so the market is always busy in the run up to September. A sensible student would start hunting early, say June, and then get a job to pay rent over the summer.

KCL is good in that SE London is relatively cheap, though can be gritty. I rent out a nice 4 bed house in Greenwich, by a station and in a nice residential street, and get sharers who pay £550 pcm. I really do not understand the prices quoted here. There will be cheaper properties, above shops etc, further in.

I am also realising that people in London live differently. Unless you earn a huge amount you are likely to be property rich and cash poor. I have, for various reasons, spent the summer out of London realise that a lot of people have a lot of disposable income. Cars...first no one seems to walk anywhere, whereas I am used to walking 40 or 50 minutes rather than engage with traffic or the Underground. All my London neighbours drive old bangers, if they have a car at all, even though some have impressive careers. I find it strange that so many people drive new cars, especially white ones which need cleaning every week, and don't get me started on personalised number plates. There are lots of other things. Bumping into a billionaire I knew from the school run, in a London Lidl looking just like anyone else, eating out in interesting ethnic restaurants, rather than somewhere "posh", not knowing anyone who belongs to a golf club. Obviously there are lots of exceptions, but frugality is normal, and displays of wealth are a bit off.

It might help students thinking about London to take a step back. What do they really want. Replicating a "typical" student experience can be expensive, but there are other experiences. Lots of students will be focussed on their subject, and there is a wealth of opportunity in terms of public lectures, etc. (DS was part of a group doing a voluntary piece of research in his first year, and one of his professors opened their address book and gave them introductions to an impressive array of senior banking and government people. DS did not really appreciate it, whilst we were gobsmacked.) It will probably be dim sum for a birthday celebration rather than a pizza in a chain restaurant, and a student disco or society, rather than clubbing. Trawl charity shops in posh areas for bargains. Got to student plays and art shows. There is plenty that is free or cheap, but a frugal mindset is key. As with adults, you need to be seriously rich if you want to replicate what people outside London may consider "normal".

Frist year in halls, and find out where second and thirds years are living. With luck you might be able to get a hand-me-down flat. DS took a room in an existing flatshare that had been going so long that they still had a Betamax recorder on the inventory.

And don't expect an ensuite.