People have been queueing outside of estate agents for days

One of them was wearing a ski helmet


Oxford University has many esteemed rites of passage. Matriculation, your first ever (and in many cases last) crew date and chewing through a pack of spearmint Orbit to stay up for May Day. For better or worse, Oxford is a university based on these fine pillars of tradition. One particular rite of passage, which tends to attract the slightly masochistic among us are the overnight housing queues.

Each year, students queue up overnight outside estate agencies waiting for them to release housing lists. Most believe that failing to register on time will mean that they won’t get a suitable roof over their heads the following year. Estate agents themselves do little to dispel these rumors, despite a number of well-intentioned Student Union campaigns over the years.

The queue

One agency that always knows how to attract a good queue is Finders Keepers on St Clement’s. This queue is particularly close to my heart as I stood in it for 27.5 hours in first year.

Driving past this queue on Monday morning was like Hunger Games meets Duke of Edinburgh. Several of the “queuers” were sporting traditional NorthFace combos which for once seemed very appropriate. A second year Historian at Keble claimed he’d been queuing since 12pm on Sunday, for a list only released on Tuesday. A St. Catz second year was wearing a ski helmet, it being the only thermal headgear he owned.

Nice hat

Despite the fierce competition bubbling under the surface however, there was still a strange sense of camaraderie between the queuers. It’s probably not too dissimilar to what victims of the plane crash in Lost experienced when they all made it back to civilisation.

Free breakie

Yet like any rite of passage, no matter how weird or painful, there were no complaints. In no small part down to the free breakfasts being given to them as they waited by Unlease. The queues were something that was just accepted as the norm – a unique part of Oxford life that not everyone gets to experience. But, despite this happening every year, nothing much has been done by landlords or estate agents to make the rental market in Oxford more efficient.