How depressing student house is

[topcat2014]

Just dropped DD off for year 2 in Birmingham. Between her and friends they will be paying 30k rent for a victorian terrace.

Honestly it mings.

Shitty worn out white goods.
Sticky floors. Shabby paint. Broken blinds. No shower curtains.

Dd won't care much (thankfully) but I have to earn a grand a month to leave enough to pay her rent.

(Rant over..)

It’s not that high for Bristol

Her halls in her first year were awful - her uni doesn’t have their own - she was paying £350 per week - own room but shared kitchen with another 4 students.

I had to rescue my DD out of her first student house . I did think it was a bad idea to share with about 4 lads , her friend and friend's boyfriend ( who turned out to be a monster ) . With one bathroom . She had her own room but I replaced curtains as they were mouldy .Boys were all 1st years , partied and just were loud until 2/3am . The bathroom was a health hazard and boys did no cleaning . She struggled on but when it became obvious that the boyfriend was probably dealing as well as taking drugs , she rang me. LL was very nice , refunded her some money and she found temporary accomadation until end of term .

I think £12k a year for a shared house or flat is a lot, even for Bristol. Certainly would dispute "it’s not that high”. It’s more than the max loan. A good deal more.

I mean if you can afford it happy days, but yes I would hope it could be nice tbh.

Friend of mine is paying £10k for a DC's room and another friend paid a bit less, both in Bristol in the last couple of years.

@Blushingm I think a lot of student halls would have more than5 per shared kitchen.

Most are around £170- £250 per week but only for 9 months even with 6 or 7 sharing 1 kitchen

No they don’t - it’s quite normal for 5 to share. If you look at Cardiff uni for example the majority of halls are around 5 sharing a kitchen

I was thinking nostalgically about a room I rented in a house with outdated decor and a nice but dated old kitchen for £50 a week. But that's taking the piss.

Yr 2 my dd was in a flat share £700 a month plus bills. 5 share so landlord got £3500 a month £42000 a year. It was ok but very worn furniture and tiny shared kitchen and old bathroom. We paid full year.
Yr 3 she only needs semester 1 due to going abroad and has gone in private halls in a studio. It’s cheaper and absolutely spotless and brand new. There was even a cash back deal. I’ll definitely be encouraging private halls for yr4.

I said “lots of” not “all” - university open day visits I did with DS had halls with 8-10 students per kitchen.

Thanks for all the replies! I need to recalibrate my view of "cheap" it seems.

Hmmm, well as far as I've been able to see, my DC who took time and a lot of effort over housing got a good house, so good that she's staying there for 2 years. And the DC who arranged accommodation in a bit of a panic later in the academic year got various horrible ones. And being prepared to walk / bus a little further makes a massive difference in quality too. All for a similar price. And landlords renting awful places tend to be unresponsive to requests for improvements or for repairs as needed.

My DS has an amazing house. He's got a split level room with desk and sofa in living area and stairs up to a mezzanine where his bed is. It's huge. There's 6 of them, all rooms are the same size. Huge kitchen diner living room and 2 big bathrooms. All for £6kpa.

Where is that?

I feel your pain OP
My daughter is in a 7 bed house in NW - landlord scooping in nearly 50k
It's a fwcking scandal!
It was in a bad state when they were due to move in so we were forced to put a rocket up the landlords arse.
He's now done the bare essentials over several weeks.
I know not all students/parents would have bothered to kick up a huge fuss.
It really grinds my gears - seems little has changed since the 80's/90's.
Next scandal for Andy B to sort I guess?

My dd's scummy landlord was making £70k from 6 of them last year. It was a nice house, granted but he was dreadful, and they are still fighting for the deposit and other issues they had. He's not a struggling mortgage payer before anyone leaps in with that - it's just despicable in my eyes.

This is so sad. I had a lovely student house, the owners family stayed there in the summer so he probably kept it nice just for them but it was clean and nice and always left a bottle of something on the kitchen table for us. I stayed there termtime for 3 years.

Doesn't matter if he was - he was running a business, not a wee side hustle.

My DC had to go to the ombudsman to get his deposit back - they had to argue over every claim he made. Fortunately they had evidence.

Always take loads of pictures when you move in, especially of anything worn or any stains, and again just before you leave once you have ‘cleaned down’. Also alert the landlord to any faults regardless of if you expect any response to them.

@Greedybilly it’s a shame that the house was in a bad state but £600 per person per month rent is not scandalous in itself.

They’re not all like that in Birmingham - when my DD did her PGCE, she shared a very nice flat about ten minutes’ walk from the station, and it wasn’t super expensive.

@SheilaFentimanthat's an odd comment- the whole point of the thread and my comment is about the scrappy state of student rentals.
£600 is a ridiculous amount if there's holes in the building and general disrepair.
If it was in a good state it would be fine.
But it's not.
Hence my comment.