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Our granddaughter is in her first year at university and is in university accomodation shared with three other students, travels (40 miles) home at weekends, and has a Saturday job. She proposes that next year she rents a house with six other girls. I haven't said anything (yet!) but I can't see it working. I don't know the full details of the house, only that it has seven personal rooms and two bathrooms. The things I mainly can't see working are use of toilets and bathroom facilities and group things such as cooking and cleaning etc. What do you think? As it is, this year she must have little time available for studying outside of actual university lectures.
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Students share in accommodation like that all the time. And it works. Even if sharing say a smaller house with two or three others, then there might only be one bathroom. At least this sounds like it has two.
She might not be able to stay in halls for the second year so it's some sort of shared house.
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My university student son has just spent 4 years sharing different houses with anywhere between 4 and 6 others - I assure you it works and is perfectly normal. A plus point is that the top Sky TV subscription works out at under a tenner each and broadband is maybe £2.50 each.
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It's the way to go given the high cost of University provided accommodation and improvements in the private sector provision.
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Girls can be different. One of mine shared a house in year 2 with 4 girls she was already friendly with. By the end of the first term they mostly weren't speaking, over the things mentioned above plus other stuff like permanent live-in boyfriends clogging the place up but contributing nothing. It doesn't always work, but it's all part of the learning curve!!
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Or as a alternative as my mate lad has a static caravan 8 berth on a site shared with 1x other lad approx 7 miles from uni, It's a old van approx 10+ years and this works out much cheaper than renting.
Not everyones taste but as dads paying and for the car it works just fine.
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Houses in multiple occupancy in student areas tend to attract burglars.
All the comings and goings seem to lead to less security, not more.
No one is entirely sure who is who, or who is responsible for locking doors.
That's no reason to advise granddaughter not to do it, but she should think about security.
Laptops are a particular target.
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Despite living 3 miles from the university when she lived at home my sister decided to move out during the final year with her best friend and other people she had met in an indie club.
She moved to Fallowfield and was broken into a few weeks later. Then this people from this rock band kept coming round and partying all through the night (friends of my sisters friend) so she couldn't get any work done. She ended up moving back in for her final exams.
She ended up not talking to her friend for a year because of it all. It also had damp, mice etc etc and despite the landlords being approved by the university.
The band in question now sell out arenas and my sister still hates them.
It is very common and normal but I would suggest they rent a smaller house. Houses marketed at students tend to be poor value too but I think that is because they are expecting to get a lot fo abuse due to the high turnover of tenants and of course higher advertising costs due to the yearly turnover.
From my experience of Manchester though the better student areas are often the ones outside of the main student area.
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My daughter just finished her course earlier in the year. For the second and third years she shared with other students... Sharing is normal, and works most of the time... In neither year was her place burgled...
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I think that putting a couple of men in there to keep control of the girls' inherent inclination to hate each other might be a good idea.
Otherwise, perfectly normal. If you don't think it will work for her, are you going to rent her a one-bed flat for her? She'll be lonely. A house like that should have a common room, not just the kitchen, just IMVHO.
I'm not sure how old you are L'es, but I'll bet that you didn't grow up having a bath every day...
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>> I'm not sure how old you are L'es, but I'll bet that you didn't grow
>> up having a bath every day...
>>
or a shower, twice a day.
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...having a bath every day...
That reminds me, there's an 'r' in the month, isn't there?
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Make sure all the occupants are jointly responsible for all bills. I've heard stories of one person being responsible and the others ducking theirs.
Friends daughter was in shared accommodation. A male in the group signed up for Sky sports and insisted everyone else paid their share.
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"I haven't said anything (yet!) but I can't see it working.
Dont. This is exactly how student education works for all the other millions of students.
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12 years ago a neighbour's kids went to Uni in Glasgow. Bought a modernised flat for £135K, son rented out 3 bedrooms - (the hall was the lounge). Rental income almost covered the mortgage and other costs.
5/6 years later the newly graduated dentist & engineer sons sell for £190K - Cost of Education ZERO - the flat appreciation in price paid for both and left a deposit for their new homes nearer their work.
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>> 12 years ago a neighbour's kids went to Uni in Glasgow. Bought a modernised flat
>> for £135K, son rented out 3 bedrooms - (the hall was the lounge). Rental income
>> almost covered the mortgage and other costs.
£135k question is : will the student population decline drastically, and the demand for accommodation with it, from 2012 onwards when the new tuition fees for "English" students come into force.
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Durham University is building more halls of residence which I think are available for the duration of study.
There's some hostility to student houses from long term residents in the centre of Durham City, and the university is slowly but surely moving operations to outlying sites.
A shared house in the centre is therefore less and less attractive - parking is another problem.
Buying such a house to fund your offspring's education would be a risk, although it's probably paid off well enough in the past.
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>> I'm not sure how old you are L'es, but I'll bet that you didn't grow
>> up having a bath every day...
>>
I certainly didn't, but since you've raised the subject I might start another thread about "Life when I was young".
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>>I might start another thread about "Life when I was young".
Great, I'd love to hear more about life in the 20's...
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Accomodation whilst at university - rtj70
