Rooms · Studios · Shared houses · Short stays
Student housing has a deserved reputation: photographs taken three tenants ago, heating that is technically present, deposits that evaporate in June and a landlord who stops answering the telephone the moment a boiler fails. We own and manage every building ourselves, publish honest photographs and floor plans with the actual room dimensions, include heating and internet in a single monthly figure, and fix things within days. It is not a remarkable proposition; it is simply rare.
About us
The company began when two former students who had spent four years in memorably bad accommodation bought and renovated a single dilapidated townhouse, having concluded that the problem was structural rather than personal: most student housing is owned by people with one property, no maintenance capacity and no reason to care, and let through agents who are paid whether the tenant is happy or not. Six buildings later the model has not changed.
We own everything we let and manage it with our own staff, including a maintenance team of two who work across the portfolio. That is the whole difference: a reported fault becomes a job on somebody's list the same morning rather than a message forwarded to an owner who is on holiday. Tenants have a direct number, we know every room individually, and we live in the same city rather than managing from an office two hundred kilometres away.
Around three hundred and twenty rooms house a deliberate mixture of local students, exchange students and doctoral researchers, across shared houses of six to ten, small studios and a handful of couple flats. We work directly with the international offices of the universities and colleges here, which matters enormously for students arriving from abroad who cannot view a room in advance and are the group most frequently exploited by this market.
Advantages
Six things every student housing provider could do and most do not.
The monthly rent includes heating, electricity, water, internet, waste charges and building insurance, with a fair-use cap that only a tenant heating the street with the window open could reach. Nobody arrives at February with a settlement bill they cannot pay, and comparing our price with somebody else's is simple arithmetic rather than a guessing game about consumption. Contracts state the figure and nothing is added later.
Every room is listed with its own photographs, taken this year, plus a floor plan with real dimensions, the window orientation, the floor it is on and a video walk-through from the front door. Nothing is a stock image of a similar room in another building. Students arriving from abroad rent unseen, and the least we can do is ensure that what they open the door to is exactly what they agreed to pay for.
Two maintenance staff work across the buildings, so a blocked drain, a failed heater or a broken lock is dealt with within a few days and urgent problems the same day. Faults are reported through a simple system that tells the tenant when somebody is coming, and we publish our average response time. Nothing else in this business generates as much misery as a landlord who is unreachable in November.
Deposits go into a blocked account in the tenant's name as the law requires, not into the landlord's current account, and they are returned within two weeks of departure. Condition is recorded in a photographic inventory at arrival and checked against it at the end, so deductions are evidenced rather than asserted. Normal wear is expected and never charged for, and the great majority of our tenants receive the full amount back.
Ten and twelve month contracts aligned to the academic calendar, plus semester lengths for exchange students, so nobody pays for a summer they will spend at home or signs a twelve-month lease for a five-month stay. Contracts are provided in more than one language with a plain summary of the important clauses, and we go through them with anybody who wants to before signing rather than after a dispute.
Shared houses are filled with some attention to who will actually live together — quiet houses and sociable houses, a mix of local and international students, doctoral researchers grouped away from first-year parties. New tenants can meet the house before committing where timing allows. It is not matchmaking and we do not pretend it always works, but it prevents most of the conflicts that make people move out at Christmas.
Services
Rooms in shared houses, studios, couple flats, short stays, arrival support and study spaces.
Furnished rooms of twelve to eighteen square metres with a proper desk, a real chair, a full-size bed and enough storage for a year rather than a weekend, in houses of six to ten with generously equipped kitchens, at least two bathrooms and a living room people actually use. Cleaning of the shared areas is included weekly, which removes the single most common source of argument in a shared house.
Studios of twenty-two to thirty square metres with private kitchen and bathroom, for students who have had enough of sharing, doctoral researchers and anyone whose schedule does not match a house full of undergraduates. Every studio has good natural light, sound insulation between units that was actually specified rather than hoped for, and a laundry on each floor. Bicycle storage is secure and covered.
A small number of one-bedroom flats for couples and for researchers arriving with a partner, a group that finds this market almost impossible because everything is either a single room or a family apartment on a three-year lease. These are let on the same academic-year terms as everything else, furnished to the same standard, and are usually spoken for a long way in advance.
Rooms by the month for summer schools, internships, visiting researchers and students arriving early to look for something permanent, and a temporary room for anyone whose long-term accommodation has fallen through. Bedding and kitchen equipment are provided, contracts are simple, and there is no requirement to be enrolled at a particular institution to take one of these.
Help with the practical obstacles that face anybody arriving from abroad: municipal registration, opening a bank account, understanding what the contract and the insurance actually cover, finding a doctor, and where to buy a decent second-hand bicycle. Keys can be collected outside office hours by arrangement, because flights land at inconvenient times and nobody should spend their first night in a hotel.
Each building has a quiet study room with proper desks, good light and reliable internet, open at all hours, along with a common room for the opposite purpose. In examination periods the quiet rooms are enforced as quiet, which sounds authoritarian and is requested by tenants every single year. There is also a shared workshop with basic tools for repairing bicycles and furniture.
Contacts
Tell us your dates, what you are studying and whether you want a shared house or a studio, and we will send what is genuinely available with photographs and floor plans. Video viewings are arranged for anybody who cannot visit, and we will never ask for money before a contract exists.
Most rooms for the autumn are allocated between March and June; enquiries after August are worth making anyway, since plans change.