Budget
Deciding on a budget can be difficult when you are new to the lettings process, especially when it is often the biggest outgoing of your student loan. Depending on the quality, location and size of the property, rental prices can vary from £250 per person per month up to £375 per person per month. Before you start, we would consider having a budget in mind that suits all of your group – you don’t want to fall out over what people can afford!
Most student properties are exclusive of bills but we can offer a bills inclusive package with a third party company and you can find their details below!
Choosing your housemates
Choosing who to live with can be a tricky decision especially when you are new to the renting process. Lots of our tenants stick with the people they lived with in student halls in first year whilst others decide to live with course mates or team mates. Just be sure, that who ever you decide to live with you have to live with for the whole of the academic year, so if you get on as friends it doesn’t always mean that you will get on as housemates (especially if they don’t like to keep the house as clean as you do!).
Once you have decided who to live with, you need to start looking for that perfect student house and arranging viewings! It can be difficult to get a whole group together so you may have to entrust 1 or 2 people to make the perfect decision (however, if you put it all in 2 people’s hands, remember they may get the first pick of the rooms). We do recommend that as many group members attend the viewing as possible to ensure that you are all on the same page and will be happy living in a property for the next 12 months! The last thing we want at Lettings Angels is unhappy tenants!
If you don’t think your group is big enough, then there are a number of ways to find tenants through social media channels and university notice boards. It can be daunting finding housemates this way but one of our angels, found her housemates through Facebook and they are now best friends!
Bills
Utility bills can be one of the most daunting part of the rental process for a student but there is nothing to worry about and it is very easy once you know what you are doing!
On average, we recommend tenants to budget approximately £50 per person per month for gas, water, electricity and internet but the best way to save money is to shop around before your tenancy starts! When you move into a property, the property will already be registered with suppliers for gas and electricity, but you do not need to stick with these. If you do some research with some of the big suppliers then they can provide you with new customer deals and many companies also have short term options available, to stop you being tied in for any longer than a year! Just remember to tell any utility companies the start date of your tenancy and not the date that you move in as you will be liable for bills for the length of the tenancy, if you are living in your property or not!
If you do not want the hassle of setting up bills with a number of companies yourself, we also work with Huddle UK. Huddle encompass a number of utility bills for a fixed price per week meaning that you only have to make one payment to one company.
Their sign up page can be found here:
Areas
The majority of students in Cardiff enjoy living in ‘Studentville’ with many of the popular streets for Cardiff students to live on being Rhymney Street, Cathays Terrace, Colum Road and Llantrisant Street. These streets put you well within walking and cycling distance of Cardiff University and University of South Wales buildings. If your going to be studying at Cardiff Metropolitan, we recommend living just off Crwys Road, City Road and Albany Road as there is easy bus links to both the Cyncoed and Llandaff campus using the Met Rider. For University of South Wales students based in Treforest, you might want to think of living as close to Cathays train station as possible so you can avoid long early morning walks to the train station (especially in the dark and the cold!).
If you’re going to be studying at the Heath Campus, then we would recommend viewing some properties off Whitchurch Road or Allensbank Road as they are within walking distance of both the Heath Hospital and City Centre.
Unlike many other agents, on each of our property listings we include approximate distances to local university campus’ to ensure that the property you enquire about or chose to rent is most suitably placed for you!