Let’s be real, your student house can make or break your academic year. From finding the ideal location to choosing the right housemates, students have a lot to juggle when hunting for their perfect home away from home. To stop you feeling frazzled, we’ve put together our top tips for students house hunting in Chester…
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How to choose your housemates
No early bird wants to be stuck in a house full of night owls and let’s face it, a year is a long time to go without your beauty sleep. When you’ve found a group that you might potentially want to live with, arrange an afternoon where you can sit down and talk honestly about what you expect from your housemates. Try discussing the following points:
- Are you all party animals, or do you prefer to get an early night?
- Are you going to arrange a weekly cleaning/ bin rota, who is happy to do which chores (if any)?
- Are you happy to share food, cutlery and crockery?
If you feel like you might not be compatible, don’t feel guilty about changing your mind.
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Start searching as a group
Once you’ve gotten over the terrifying hurdle of choosing your housemates, it’s time to start searching. But be warned, there is often an overly excited individual who takes the lead and starts booking viewings without consulting the group. To avoid anyone feeling left out, arrange a time when you can get together and have a group google session. Grab your laptops and a coffee (or a vino) and get searching, it’ll make the experience far less stressful if you are all on the same page from the start.
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How to pick the right location for your student house
It’s important to bear in mind that as a five-campus University, UoC is spread out across the whole of Chester. While a swanky flat overlooking the River Dee may seem like a nice idea, you’re probably going to want to avoid a 30 minute walk in the rain to get you to Parkgate Road campus. If your student house is too far away from campus, you might be tempted to skip seminars for a lie in. To avoid getting bombarded by those pesky low attendance emails, opt for a house that is within a reasonable walking distance from campus.
Check out our handy Hoots House locator to see which of our properties is closest to your campus: https://hoots.co.uk/locations
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What questions to ask at your student house viewing
Congratulations, you’ve managed to agree on a potential new home! Now it’s time to find out all the nitty-gritty information about the property. Here are a few important questions you might want to ask at your viewing:
- Are bills included?
- Does this property require a deposit/ holding fee?
- Where are the smoke/ carbon monoxide alarms?
- Where are the closest transport links?
- Where is the closest shop/ cash machine?
Just remember, the letting agents are there to help you find out whether a property is suitable for you and your housemates, so it’s important that you ask anything that comes to mind (no question is a stupid one!)
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Signing your contract
Where possible, try to sign your contract in person. This will help you get to know your letting agency and ask any final niggling questions you might have about the property. At Hoots, we love to get to know our tenants on a personal basis so we can help them have the best student experience possible.
Fancy chatting over your future student home? Pop into Hoots HQ for a coffee and we will show you what we’re all about: https://hoots.co.uk/
