When should we start looking for second year housing/housemates?

People have already decided their 2nd year housemates like what we just got here pls

If you sort things out early then there's more choice and potentially less stress trying to arrange something out nearer the time.

But it is also a bit of a risk. We get a lot of threads from people who have fallen out with someone they've arranged accomodation with and are stuck potentially living with them for a year.

Personally, I wouldn't even be thinking about it until semester 2.

Reply 2

aspalax

I did both! I booked my 2nd year accom in October in my 1st year with some friends I met that offered - which in hindsight I got pretty lucky with. We lived together pretty okay with only a couple of major problems (mostly one of my housemates continually having her much older boyfriend round..)

And then I went on placement, so I ending up sorting my final year accommodation really late (around June) and living with a group of 3 who needed a last person to make up numbers for their house. And had about the same experience - was generally fine but we still had some issues (messy common areas, people being loud in the night).

So in all honesty i'm not that convinced it makes much odds! If you're more academic focused (which I was) and you'll be out most of the day anyway studying/working etc. It really doesn't matter all that much. There's often some "artificial scarcity" that goes around with people being like "Oooh if you leave it too late there's no good houses left..." like, yeah, to some extent that's true but also no student houses are that nice. You will basically always be able to find somewhere, so I wouldn't worry about locking in that early.

Reply 3

Scienceisgood

I would look as soon as possible if you are in your first year. Houses start going in November/December meaning all the cheap housing is gone by around New Year.

As for housemates, try and make mates first, I was asked if I wanted to house with someone around Feb/March and whilst the house we found wasn’t the best, it was still decent and we didn’t have a bad landlord, albeit no bills included!