Walk All Over Us

York, here’s your starter for ten. Is there time to trust anyone in the housing market? It comes as no surprise that some landlords treat students badly. I’ve been told to avoid using any letting agent’s names in order to avoid getting into too much trouble… So choose to go with Eclair Properties, and you know you’ve got the short straw when you do not get your deposit back. But this is nothing new. Go with Madam Bunnett and he’ll charge you for choosing to spend your money on his houses. So why do landlords and estate agents get away with this? The answer: because they think they can.

Having been through more houses than even an MP could fiddle, it is clear to me that the good guys in the housing world are slowly dwindling. The party line from Union headquarters is that there are always more houses than will ever be rented, so there is no need for students to worry about the first year being oversubscribed with hundreds of student moving into private accommodation, as this certainly could not happen…again. And out of the many houses there truly are some genuine landlords amongst the rotten bunch. Finding them, however, is difficult.

Nevertheless, if you jump to the conclusion that you’ll be better off going with a large group of friends into a house, you’ll soon realise just how many different rooms can be converted into a bedroom: living room, dining room, garage – at least living in the bathroom has its benefits. Think you’d be living it up in some mansion? Think again.

Landlords are passing the burden of increasing costs onto students through rent. A few mathematical calculations soon show just how cheeky they are being. A five person student house for around £75 per week would generate an incredible £19,500 over the year for the landlord. Increasing this by £5 per week for each student would give the landlord a tidy lump sum of £1,560 to add to their riches, leaving students having to fork up most of their budget for food. However, just outside York a family of five can rent a house for £18,000 a year; with four bathrooms, study, lounge, dining room, with acres of land: the works. But what do students get for having to pay a higher price?

What’s more is letting agents are charging students in excess of £50 each for “administration fees” to move into one of their properties. For what could end up being hundreds of pounds, I am sure that I could print off and organise a couple of sheets of paper. Even the process of forming these legal documents has just become a case of click and print, a job that should not warrant such a substantial fee. Letting agents have told students that they need to charge these higher fees in order to pay for costs they have incurred designing new websites and buying mini-buses. But why should students have to pay such disproportionate surcharges for things that are essential for any business? Landlords already pay these letting agents commission. It is pure insult to injury to try and take money off students for these costs as well.

This leaves us in a bit of a pickle, whether to pay the increased costs or to look for cheaper alternatives in the slums of York. Opting for the former would mean bearing the brunt of the landlords’ greed. Opting for the latter would mean being likely to leave your house with only half of the possessions, none of which would be electrical.

However, there is a solution to our problems. We could all insist that we pay rent only during the academic year and not during the summer, when ninety-nine percent of students have gone home. This could easily be sorted prior to leaving or during the summer. It could save around a grand each, helping to combat the increase in rent. Sure there may be less choice of houses as the bourgeoisie snap up the most comfortable and you’ll probably end up further away than you would like. But for the sake of a few weeks of uncertainty, you could save a fortune against these money grabbing pigs.

Students are easy prey for landlords and letting agents. They know that we want to live near to campus. By having such precise criteria and being inflexible landlords know that they can always win as we have no choice but to agree to their high charges, poor conditions, and bad practices if we insist on being inflexible.
So fellow students and house hunters, the only people we can trust in the student housing market are ourselves, ourselves to find the best deal possible and ourselves to not become victims of this exploitation. Most important, however, is not to succumb to the initial housing hysteria. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.