How early is too early for house hunting in Notts?

For me, house hunting was undoubtedly one of the most difficult parts of first year.

You walk into this completely new city, with people you hardly know, and within a few months you’re suddenly expected to gather new friends to live with and find a house.

It’s ridiculously stressful, and what adds to it is the completely unnecessary time pressure placed on students to complete the house hunt within the first months of coming to university. But how early is too early?

Students tend to start talking about housing from October onwards. The clear-cut answer is that is too early.

Who you live with forms a huge part of university life, so committing yourself to the first people you meet, when you haven’t had the chance to truly get to know them yet, can be a recipe for disaster.

Don’t be the horror story example of the student who rushed into housing with their new freshers friends, before realising that they don’t get along at all.

My advice is to take into account not just how well you get on with someone, but how compatible your lifestyles are.

If you like your sleep and nights in, agreeing to share with someone who will wake you up coming back from the club every night might not be the best choice. If you’re obsessed with cleanliness and your friend leaves the kitchen messier than their situationship, it is not going to work. Arguments will ensue and passive aggressive text messages will be sent. It won’t be pretty.

Having these conversations about lifestyles is essential before you sign any housing contracts, and it will take you longer than a few weeks to establish if you think they’re your people or not.

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So when should you actually start house hunting?

So what’s the answer? In an ideal world, you should have already decided who you would like to live with in around mid-November.

Nothing needs to be signed and cemented, but it is in first term that your friends will want to start creating plans for the next year. People will start making groups around then, so making sure you’re having those conversations and assessing all your options is useful to be doing.

Most people tend to sign in late November to December. I know I signed in the last week of term in mid-December. I’d had that group firmly decided upon for a week at that point.

But, if you haven’t settled on the people you’d like to live with yet, don’t worry. Getting together your group is the part I’d really recommend spending the most time on. Once you’re happy with your group and ready to start looking around houses, this process is much easier than you would anticipate.

Luckily in Notts, there is no housing shortage. Estate agents who tell you that all the best properties go ASAP are usually lying to you in attempts to get you to sign. In reality, there are a lot of different housing options available to you. I found one I was really happy with within a week of solid searching.

I wanted to get it done before Christmas, so I wouldn’t have it hanging over me over the winter break, but even if you haven’t found one yet, there’s no need to panic.

Not all the student houses get uploaded to UniHomes at the same time, and so if you don’t immediately find your “the one”, then a new batch of houses will be placed on the market in January. It is far better that you find an environment you’d be happy in than rushing to sign something that isn’t your vibe.

You should definitely aim to have your housing sorted by February. But even if that’s not the position you find yourself in, all hope is not lost! Houses will still be about, and you can go on Facebook to discover people searching for people to complete their group, as well as tenancy takeovers. My brother and his friends found their student house in April. Who would have thought that was possible?

My point is, signing your student house doesn’t need to be on an arbitrary time limit. There is no need to rush the process. Your student house will form such a large part of your university experience that it is much more important to get it right, than to get it done fast.

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