Looking for a new place

One of the first things you need to know when you are looking for a house is the date you would like to move in. If you are coming to the UK first time it can be more challenging for you to find a place then if you are already in the UK. Our recommendation would be to arrange a place with your friends or a short-term stay and give yourself a bit time to go to see available accommodation around your college or work area and choose the best one for you.

You can always post your accommodation request under wanted category and let people contact you and offer their places. You should be always cautious and avoid paying money if people ask in advance before you see the place and actually decide to take it.

If you are already in the UK then you may have more time to look for available rooms, flats or houses however you should use your time wisely and should not leave it to last few days.

There are many ways that you can search for your next accommodation and the most popular one is online ads. Like our website there are many websites on internet where you can see listed accommodation for different cities around UK and you can easily reach to these sites by using search engines. The advantage of online ads is that you can see  the pictures, location and detailed information of many places by browsing internet and that way you can save your time and find your ideal place very easily.

If you are a student and coming to UK then you can also contact to your University or college and ask them about accommodation facilities. There might be a bit difference in the prices but if the facilities and services they include in the price will save you money in the long run then that could be a better choice for you.

Another option to find a place is to use newspapers. A great example for this option would be Loot which lists many rooms, flats or houses to rent locally.

Finally you can visit local estate agencies and pick a free leaflet to see their available lettings.

The following questions will also help you to narrow down the location or the type of  accommodation you are looking for ?

Alternatively you can always ask more specific questions in our Accommodation Forums.

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Viewing and Renting a house or a flat

So you have found some adverts which looks quite attractive and meets your criteria and you would like to rent it. The first thing you should do is to print these ads and contact to the landlord or agency to arrange a viewing. It is recommended that you choose a day time for your appointment. Avoid paying any money or deposit to view a property if you are asked.

Always take someone with you when you go to a viewing. A friend of yours or your parents can help you with a second opinion and can spot things which you could miss during the viewing.

Before your meeting you might need to go through this list or print this list of questions in order to make sure you covered most of the things when you view the accommodation:

Before entering to the property :
So you have travelled using public transport or with your private car and arrived at location.

When you arrived at the property:

Inside the property

Safety And Security

Bathroom and Kitchen

Furniture
If the house or flat being supplied as furnished you need to make sure that everything is in good condition and there is not any risk to your health and safety. Try all the sofas, chairs, beds and tables. Check for any stain, cracks or deformation and make sure it is going to be written down on the inventory report and also check cupboard doors, wardrobes, chest of drawers and make sure they are all in good state.

Finally you need to ask about other various things such as what kind of modifications you are allowed to make in the property. Are you allowed to paint the walls ? Can you hang a mirror in a room ? Are the pets allowed in the property ?

Now you have made a list of questions that you are going to ask and the next important task is to plan your journey in advance , dress well and not to be late for your appointment and leave a good first impression on the landlord or agency.

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Find the right tenant

If you have a room or a property to let, the following article might give you some useful hints.

In order to a find a tenant very easily, you need to do some kind of advertising. These days many people prefer to use online resources and there are many websites available where you can advertise your property or room for free. We recommend you to use all websites available to increase your chances.

If you have any option to put pictures in your adverts you should definitely use it. These days you can easily take pictures with a phone camera but pictures taken by a digital camera would have a better quality and uploading is much simpler. It is a fact that people respond ads with pictures more then with only text, so you will have a better chance of getting responses for your adverts.

Before taking any pictures, clean and tidy your property and make sure the photos are not dark and you have chosen best photos out of all.

In your ads describe your property in good detail so that you can attract people.

Some details you can cover are :

When you are arranging viewings make sure you are polite and match a time and date which are the most suitable with your prospective tenants. You can save some time by asking following questions on the phone or e-mail :

When you meet with your prospective tenants it is important that you and your tenant understand in advance what you expect from each other. And if a tenant requests a written statement of the main terms of the tenancy agreement, then you are legally obliged to provide one.

Clauses in an agreement could include:

Although it might be simple to find tenants but it is not easy to keep them for a long time. If you do not like advertising all the time to find new tenants then you should know your responsibilities and be as much as friendly as a landlord. One of the things you should know that there are several things that the law states you have to do, if you have paying tenants in your home.

You should make sure:

If you are (or aim to be) a live-in landlord, make sure you treat tenants with respect and courtesy.

One other tip for maintaining good relations with tenants: make sure there is enough hot water for them to bathe or shower in the mornings before they go to work.
For the majority of live-in landlords, tenants are a welcome source of extra income, they help to prevent crime (an occupied home is safer than an empty one) and they provide company.

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Noisy neighbours

Noise, usually defined as unwanted sound, is measured scientifically in decibels. The sound of breathing is 10 decibels, a washing machine is 70, and heavy traffic is 80/90.
Prolonged exposure above 85 decibels will damage hearing - which is probably why The Who's Pete Townshend is almost deaf and suffers "unbearable" pains in his ears.
However, when it comes to defining noise as a statutory nuisance, the current regulations don't rely on decibels to decide. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 (Sections 79 - 82), has this to say:
"For a noise to constitute a "nuisance" in the legal sense, it must be unreasonable and cause substantial interference to normal domestic activities.
"The frequency and duration of individual occurrences, loudness, time of day/night, as well as the length of time the nuisance has been caused (weeks/months) are amongst the factors which are taken into consideration".

A Quiet Word
If a neighbour is bombarding you with booming drum 'n' bass, the first step, says the Department of the Environment, is to have a quiet word - "you may find that they are unaware that they are disturbing you".
You do not have to talk to them. A nicely worded note left pushed under the door or through the letter box can help in many cases.
Sage advice, no doubt, and many problems are solved at this early stage.

Mediation
Mediation UK will act as go-betweens and will try and negotiate a solution acceptable to all parties. Between 2002 and 2003, they dealt with over 47,000 cases, 78% of which reached full or partial agreement, so they really are worth a go.
Bear in mind, too, that when you decide to sell your house the buyer's solicitor will send you a form asking if you've had any disputes with the neighbours - lie and you can be liable. So sorting the problem out though mediation could save you a lot of hassle in the future as well as ensure a good night's sleep.

Legal Measures
Call the Council: If these informal approaches fail, you'll need to call in the big legal guns - and that means the Environmental Health Officer at your local council.
They are legally obliged to investigate all complaints of unreasonable noise and will come to see if your complaint amounts to a statutory nuisance as defined above.
In the process, they will probably ask you to keep a diary detailing the dates, times, duration, and nature of the noise. And they might install equipment to monitor the racket. They will also write to the person causing the noise and request their co-operation.
If the council decides the noise constitutes a statutory nuisance they will serve a noise abatement order on the perpetrator. This informs them that the noise is an offence and must be stopped.
If there are further offences they can seize equipment (e.g.: a stereo) and they can also bring the offender to the Magistrates Court. Those convicted can be fined up to £5,000 and a further £500 per day for every day they do not comply with the court's orders.
If the noise is part of a wider problem involving a violent or abusive neighbour, the council can hit them with an Anti-social Behaviour Order (ASBO), which allows the council to take action with the police.
Offenders can be banned from certain actions, have a curfew imposed and can even be banged up for a maximum of five years, a measure which will certainly sort the problem out once and for all.

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Go Green

Appliances on Standby
Although your TV screen may look dormant, it’s actually using energy at an alarming rate behind that innocent-looking façade. Recent studies have shown that gadgets left on standby squander electricity worth £740m per annum and are responsible for 4m tonnes of excess carbon dioxide each year.
The good news is that recent government legislation has meant that standby buttons are beginning to be phased out, making energy efficiency within your home much easier to achieve. However, rather than waiting for these changes to begin, why not get a head start by switching off your appliances now? You’ll be saving energy, money and cutting your carbon emissions.
The average UK household wastes £37 each year by leaving appliances on standby.

Keep your Fridge/Freezer full
Your fridge/freezer is one of the busiest energy users in your kitchen, running at full capacity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. And the emptier your fridge or freezer is, the harder it has to work to keep everything inside nice and cold.
Keeping your fridge or freezer as full as possible reduces the amount of energy used by your appliance. While we’d love to have them packed with delicious foods and drinks all the time, it’s far more cost-effective (and better for the waistline!) to fill empty space in your appliances with carrier bags filled with newspaper.
As well as reducing the energy usage by one of your home’s most power-hungry appliances, you could save pounds off your electricity bills too.
A half-empty fridge can use 20% more energy than a full one.
Keeping your fridge full could cut £20-£30 per year off your electricity bill.

Only Boil as much as you need in your Kettle
A recent study showed that most people don’t look at the volume indicator on the side of their kettle, often resulting in them boiling far more water than they actually need. Referring to this measure can help you to accurately determine the amount of liquid necessary.
Another way to measure how much water you require is to fill the cup or saucepan you are planning to use and then pour this water into the kettle, remembering to add a little bit extra to compensate for evaporation.

Turn that Thermostat down
Winter is cold and wearing extra layers of lovely warm clothing is the best way to keep the chill out. Bikinis are not ideal winter wear, and neither are shorts or sleeveless t-shirts.
However, many people still dress in summer garments during the winter months and then turn up the heating to compensate. And, even if you’re not partial to wearing a bikini in your living room, it's still likely that you don’t put on enough clothing to keep warm without the aid of central heating.
If your house starts to feel chilly put on a jumper rather than turning up the heating. Or, if you think you may be overheating your house, turn down the thermostat and try warm clothing instead.
Alternatively, if you feel your house is the right temperature, you could consider decreasing the amount of time the heating is actually switched on for. Do you really need to keep the house warm until midnight when you’re in bed by ten? Or could you sleep under an extra blanket and turn off the heating a couple of hours earlier?
Also consider setting your thermostat to come on a bit later in the morning. By shaving just two hours off the time you spend heating your house each day, you could make a significant energy and financial saving.
Turning down your thermostat by just one degree can cut 10% off your heating bill. The average annual heating bill for a three-bed, semi-detached house is £450, so you could save around £45 per year by simply losing one degree.
If you decide to reduce the amount of time your heating is on for you could make an even larger saving. Central heating costs around 30p per hour (less if you have Economy Seven). Therefore, if you can switch off your heating 2 hours earlier each evening you could save 60p a day. Even though you will only need your heating on for around half the year, this would still add up to a saving of nearly £110 annually!

Wash at a Lower Temperature
Most modern detergents work just as well in cooler water and some are even designed to work at a lower temperature. Why not try washing your clothes at 30°C to save energy and help to reduce CO2 emissions.
Alternatively, to be an even greener cleaner, use laundry balls in your wash. Not only can these be used on a lower temperature, but they also negate the need for harmful detergents.
Lowering the temperature of your wash could save you up to 40% on the running costs of your washing machine.

Turn that light bulb off
This is probably the easiest switch you can make. Rather than leaving a light on when you exit a room, simply switch it off. It couldn’t be easier!
The less time you spend with the lights on, the more energy you save. A normal bulb will use 60 watts of energy an hour, meaning that you could conserve nearly 22,000 watts of energy per year by just switching off one bulb for one hour every day. That’s enough energy to power one months worth of evening TV viewing!
Also try to consider how many lights you need on, or if you need one on at all. Is a lamp really necessary in a sunlit room? Do you need three separate sources of light in your kitchen?
By making small changes like this you’ll soon be saving energy and money.
A cut of just 6 hours of individual bulb lighting every day will save you enough energy for six-months worth of evening TV viewing!
Turning off one bulb for one hour a day will save you in the region of £2.20 a year. Therefore, if you can cut the 6 hours mentioned above, not only will you be offsetting your evening TV viewing for half the year, but you’ll also be saving over £13 per annum.

Hang your washing out
If the weather’s looking pleasant, dry your clothes on a line outside. Even if the weather is being typically British, you can still avoid the tumble dryer by finishing off your wet washing indoors.
Be careful not to put your clothes over a radiator though as this stops the heat from reaching the rest of the room, creates damp and provides good growing conditions for mould. Try putting up a clothes rail in an unheated room, opening the window slightly to allow damp to escape and shutting the door to stop heat being drawn into the room.
If you still need to use your dryer, don’t put soaking wet clothes into it. This will only mean it takes even longer to dry them, using up extra energy and costing you more. Wring out clothes or spin-dry them first to reduce moisture as much as possible.
Also, keeping heavy fabrics (such as damp towels and bedding) away from lighter fabrics will help to reduce the cycle time needed for some loads.

Turn those chargers off
95% of the energy used by the UK’s mobile phone chargers is wasted energy. Only 5% is actually utilized to charge phones, the rest is squandered when the charger is plugged into the wall but not switched off at the socket. That’s over 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions that could be avoided if we all just unplugged our chargers!
This is probably one of the easiest changes to make. At the end of charging your mobile, laptop, digital camera or anything else that may need to be plugged in, simply disconnect it or switch it off at the wall. Easy peasy!

Fully Loaded Washing Machines
The half load setting on your washing machine uses more than half the energy and water of a full load, so it makes better economical and environmental sense to wait until you have a full load of clothes.
Try to store up all your clothes until you have enough to fill one large load, rather than having to run several smaller ones. By conserving energy and water you’ll be saving on your monthly bills, as well as needing to buy less washing powder.

Defrost your Freezer regularly
Have a look in your freezer. Can you see over 1cm thickness of ice around the inside, or crystals forming on packages? If the answer is yes, then it's time to defrost your freezer.
The first step is to get rid of all your food. This doesn’t mean that you have to throw it away or eat everything up in one go though. The easiest way to store your food is to just wrap each item in newspaper, place them all in a box, and put the box in the coldest place you can think of. You can also use a freezer bag or ice box if you have these available.
Then leave the freezer to defrost itself overnight, or speed things up a little by using boiling water or a hairdryer. Unplug the freezer before starting any defrosting process and don't forget that you'll need tons of towels to mop up excess water.
Making this switch will cost you very little and, by saving energy, you're also saving money on your electricity bill.

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Leaving your Accommodation

Prepare your packing in advance, doing it in one day is very stressful and mistakes are easily made as useful things are binned and rubbish is packed into boxes.
To get quick storage boxes, you can travel to major stores such as Ikea or supermarkets. To get cheap cardboard boxes, ask at supermarkets or retail shops. Banana Boxes and Crisp Boxes can be very useful.
Try to take some care over your packing too - you only have to unpack it all somewhere else. Rushed and messy filling of boxes will result in problems and frustration at your new place. It's seriously worth trying to sort out odd papers, notes and books too. I speak from experience here - shoving a load of papers in a box to sort out later doesn't help. A year down the line and I still haven't sorted through them. Try and do it before you move out and be enthusiastic with filling those recycling bags with your waste.

Handing in Keys
If you are at a University Accommodation, The University should tell you what to do about this in a either a letter and/or email. With private landlords you are best contacting them to find out what their preference is. Some may wish to come and take the keys off you on the day you move out (and also check up on the property as you leave). Others may be happy for you to leave them in your room/pushed back through the letter box.
Just remember to leave all the keys that you were given or you could face deductions from your deposit for new ones. It will probably be cheaper for you replace any lost keys than leave it up to your landlord - who will probably also charge you 'time' for having to go and get the new keys.

Mail Redirection
Royal Mail offers a redirection service for mail that is delivered to your address. This can be found here.
It is always worth leaving a forwarding address with your landlord too, or leave a note in the house (my first house had forwarding address for the previous three years tenants). If it's not possible/inconvenient to leave address with the landlord, is there nice neighbour who would be willing collect any mail for you and pass it on?

Storage Companies
Instead of taking it all back home with you, many companies offer the opportunity to store your stuff in a box in their warehouse over the summer. There are many companies in this market and you are advised to ask other which companies are the most reputable.
Ensure you clean everything before putting it the box and that none of it perishable over the three months. This will prevent the build up of anything in your box over the summer.

Cleaning
Chances are you moved in to your house when it was reasonably clean - and you will be expected to leave it in a good state too (check your contract - it most likely will be mentioned in there). It doesn't take long to give everything a really good clean, polish and hoover - if you're sharing a house a couple of hours work each should have the place looking great - especially if you have kept on top of everything over the year.
Failing to leave the place clean and tidy will mean your landlord will have to do it - this could mean getting cleaners in at professional rates. But you've moved out, so it won't be you paying? Wrong. Your landlord has your deposits and cleaning up after you is one of the most common reasons why you won't get it all back. It's really easy to avoid having to pay this, so make sure you don't loose money because of this.
Also, many houses come with an inventory - check this before you leave or again you could be charged for missing or broken items. It's best to have reported anything broken or lost to your landlord throughout the year - especially anything beyond normal wear and tear. If you've had a bad experience with your landlord though the year too, it might also be worth getting a few photos of the state you left the house in and of any "problem" items, just in case they try to pull a fast one. The vast majority are honest people, but like everywhere in life a very small minority trying to make a bit of extra cash by exploiting people.

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Sources used in these articles :

- The Student Room Articles (http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/)
- Guide to letting a property (http://www.primelocation.com/)