I need a house for university for next year. What's the best place to look.

ashy_mashy

My university is in London (Imperial College) and I start uni in October. I have gone to our accommodation office and given them my email address but they are simply useless as they never send any emails. My best chances are to travel to London everyday to see the latest on their board since they are too lazy to email all their students!

I have been warned hundreds of times that buying a house through typical newspaper advertisement is very risky, so I don't want to end up being scammed

Are there any trustworthy accommodation links (both on the internet and others) , that offer good value accommodation options?

F_T_Buyer

usually uni's produce lists at a specific time of year, there is then a rush to find the best accomodation. I believe this is around feb-march time for the following academic year.

aloiseb

I dont' know if Imperial still do this, but they used to rent their accomodation out during the summer vacation. (Friends had booked some for the Proms season! - about 15 years ago this was, though, and I dont' know how far in advance they were)
Even if they dont' it might be worth getting yourself on the spot, so to speak, so you can go in to the office and ask the people regularly, and also look at notice boards in college itself. Unless you have to buy right away for some reason, you might like to spend some time in a rented place, maybe, findign out what area of London you want to be looking to buy in. I dont' think this would be a waste of money as the place is so huge and diverse.

ashy_mashy

aloiseb wrote:

I dont' know if Imperial still do this, but they used to rent their accomodation out during the summer vacation. (Friends had booked some for the Proms season! - about 15 years ago this was, though, and I dont' know how far in advance they were)
Even if they dont' it might be worth getting yourself on the spot, so to speak, so you can go in to the office and ask the people regularly, and also look at notice boards in college itself. Unless you have to buy right away for some reason, you might like to spend some time in a rented place, maybe, findign out what area of London you want to be looking to buy in. I dont' think this would be a waste of money as the place is so huge and diverse.

I need the house for all of next year. Don't need it for the summer

PoorDave

Are you looking to buy or rent? Confused

ashy_mashy

PoorDave wrote:

Are you looking to buy or rent? Confused

To rent for the university term

mgw99

Imperial's still part of the Uni of London for the time being I think. I seem to remember that their housing services are pretty good. They have a list of registered letting agents on their site here and they have links to their find a flatmate service as well

ms_london

www.thegumtree.com - have a "shared accommodation" section - this is an antipodean website, but I've used it to find all my places since I've been in London and its fab!! A great section for jobs too!!

impy78

I second Gumtree, we just found a house using that.... also there is Imperial College's own accommodation site - here

Edited to add:

There is also a site here about student accomodation with a notice board, and star rating scheme HERE.

Jim_B_3

I studied at IC; the IC accomodation office is great for telling you about places in IC halls (I found that if you could wait until xmas each year, a few people in halls would leave for various reasons, giving the opportunity to get back in halls for the rest of the year, with the cheap rent on surprisinginly well-maintained blocks and no landlord worries). I spent three of my four years there in halls, which for Uni of London is pretty good.

IC accom office don't do much in the way of private landlords, essentially because it's London. Pick an area and just hit the letting agencies. Some people spent five hundred a month on a shared bedroom in South Kensington, with a cooker on the landing (shared with the other three shared bedrooms) and a tiny shower and toilet, some people go out to end of a tube line.

Be aware that lots of landlord's will not be willing to sign leases to suit your timetable, and may insist on a year, for example.

Dead_Eye_Jones

I found that my uni accom office was the best bet for help in that area, they were really very constructive although make it clear that you have to sort it out for yourself at the end of the day, they wont do the work for you!

They get very busy so Im not suprised they dont respond to emails, I think you have to rememebr that not everywhere is run by email and many services simply ignore them, remember these departments are probably run by people who prefer using the phone - but thats no problem, just give them a call!

Alternatively pop in and see them, I used to go over to Uni over summer to get things arranged, tbh youve gotta put a bit of effort in, no ones gonna do it for you, get on the phone, get over there, get things moving as it only gets harder as term approaches...

Good luck with the degree