Special Post #5: Accommodation, Part 3 – The Quickening

This is the third post in a multi-part series of about the great adventure of looking for a student house for next year. We left off with the university’s plans for getting everyone accommodation…

So it’s Monday 23rd February. The university list for sublet property has just come out. That night me and my future housemates got together to go through the list and put down houses that we liked. It was interesting to see what factors people considered as the most important when looking for the houses. I was putting distance to university as my number 1 factor. It had to be within 10 minutes walk. Most of my housemates agreed that this was definitely a big deal, but some other factors bubbled up too:

• Price. Obviously this was the deal clincher. If it was over £85 a week all inclusive (ie, including all bills) then it was too expensive. Currently, we were all paying about £80 a week, so this seemed reasonable.
• Washing machine. It only seemed fair that the house should have a washing machine. If it didn’t then it needed to have a very good reason. Luckily all the houses on the list seemed to include a washing machine, so this wasn’t an issue.
• Double Glazing. Now this seemed reasonable considering the varied weather and how cold it would be otherwise. Somewhat surprisingly (to me, anyway) was that double glazing wasn’t in all the properties.
• Broadband access. I know! some of the houses didn’t even have broadband! This immediately wrote them off my list. Urgh! How can you live without broadband? (*cough* Graeme *cough*)

Overall, I thought the list would be about 30-40 houses long. But it turned out that there were only 10 5 bedroom houses on the list. Cutting it down to 7 wasn’t too difficult, but it was an interesting experience having to discuss these sorts of things to each other for the first time. Anyway, we managed to get the 7 and then it was just a matter of submitting it.

The next day (called Tuesday by those in the know) me and Josh went to the accommodation office to get a form. While we were there we were told by the guy about the process (see last post). He said the draw would be on Friday and then you have have to view the house over the weekend and decide by noon on Monday whether you wanted the house or not. The problem with that was you didn’t have a chance to look at any houses on the private list before you had to make a decision on the house.

Wednesday Josh set about filling out the form with everyone’s details, which was no mean feat considering that he needed to get the full names, courses and university numbers of each of us. However, by Wednesday evening Josh had done it!

It was only late Wednesday night that Josh realised something horrific. The applications were due in at 5pm on Wednesday. Profanity ensued…

First thing Thursday morning me and Josh go down to the accommodation office to beg and plead our way into the draw. Unfortunately neither of us are women, nor do we have the necessary skills required to seduce a 20-something male into letting us post our application. So we left not empty handed, but with the application form held tightly. Profanity ensued…

Never mind. There’s still the private accommodation list, right? There’s bound to be loads of houses on there that’ll be perfect and we can easily get. Surely…

Found out next time on Accommodation, Accommodation, Accommodation.