You do not have to sign for a second-year house in November
Everyone in your corridor is forming groups and you have known them eight weeks.
By Ray Bickerstaff ·
Around the start of November, in a building full of people who have known each other for six weeks, a rumour goes round that all the good houses have gone.
Within a fortnight, groups of five and six are forming, contracts are being signed, and people are committing to live with somebody they met in a queue in September.
What is actually true
There genuinely is a rush, it genuinely is earlier than makes any sense, and it is driven by letting agents rather than by supply.
There are also, every single year, houses available in February, in March and in June, and there is always somebody looking for a housemate because a group of six became a group of five.
Nobody who signed in November got a better house than the people who signed in February. They got a house sooner, with less information, with people they had known for eight weeks.
The one question worth asking
Not "do I like these people". You have only seen them at their most sociable.
Ask instead: have I seen this person on a bad week?
Living with somebody is not about their best evening. It is about what happens in the flat in February when three of you have a deadline and one of you has flu. You cannot know that in November about anybody, which is exactly the point.
The practical bits, which nobody does
- Read the contract. Most student tenancies are joint and several, which means if one of the five stops paying, the other four owe it. That single sentence is the most important thing on this page and almost nobody in a first-year corridor has heard it.
- Check the deposit is protected, and get the scheme name in writing.
- Photograph everything on the day you move in, including what is already broken.
- Ask what the bills actually were last year, not what the agent estimates. The previous tenants are usually easy to find.
- Use your students' union housing adviser. Their whole job is looking at a contract before you sign it, for nothing. It takes half an hour and it is the best-value thing in the building.
And the actual advice
You do not have to sign in November. That is the whole of it.
A house you sign in February with people you have known since Christmas is, on every measure that turns out to matter, a better house.
Questions people ask about this
When do students actually need to sign for a second-year house?
Later than the November rush suggests. Houses are available in February, March and June every year, and groups regularly lose a member and go looking for a replacement. The rush is driven by letting agents rather than by supply.
What does joint and several liability mean in a student tenancy?
It means each tenant is responsible for the whole rent, not just their share. If one housemate stops paying, the others owe the difference. Most student tenancies are joint and several and it is rarely explained before signing.
How do you choose who to live with in second year?
The useful question is not whether you like them, because you have only seen them at their most sociable. It is whether you have seen them on a bad week. A house is mostly Tuesdays.
This is one chapter of The Student Survival Guide. The rest of it is the same, at greater length, with the sources in the back.