House-hunting in Brighton is the worst part of the year

Yet to find your dream pad for second or third year? Be afraid, be very afraid. Student houses in Brighton leave something to be desired, with their sky-high rent and abundance of mould, but horrors far worse could be lurking behind every door.

Being warned of the disgusting state of the house before you’ve even walked over the threshold can only prepare you so much for the experience . The smell of the different houses you visit will always be a surprise; the stench of stale sweat, smoke and what can only be described as something rotting, is hardly the promising start you were hoping for. In just one house, these are the horrors you can expect to encounter.

Once you’ve stepped over the pile of old post almost as big as your deadlines list and you’ve made it to the first bedroom, a nicely made bed is a pleasant surprise. The severe lack of decoration (unless you count a lonely bottle of bleach on a shelf as an ornament) and the FHM magazine sitting proudly on the desk, hardly leave you feeling at home in the empty room. After awkwardly shuffling you and your friends out of the tiny doorway, making your way to the kitchen may as well be an Olympic sport due to the sheer volume of cigarette filters and dirty underwear that litter the hallway.

Nice and…homely?

A quick peek in the fridge will leave you with singed nostrils, and a pang of disappointment at the rotting avocado that’s going to waste. Pots and pans filled with days old pasta cover so much of the worktops that you question if the kitchen even has worktops. Being careful not to trip over the kitchen knife outside, you make your way to the garden and will be amazed at the cleanliness of the patio. Maybe they’re so busy making the house messy that they don’t have time to get to the garden.

“Ahh fresh air”

Upstairs gives you all the delights you’d expect in a student house: loose fitting carpet on the stairs, a wardrobe that doesn’t fit in the bedroom and the bathroom filled with everything that doesn’t belong in a bathroom. Entering another bedroom fills you with excitement/dread/hope at what you may discover. Little did you know that a bed with no sheets and a dehumidifier behind a wardrobe would greet you. What would a student house be without its own mould colony?

Bathrooms are always touch-and-go in student houses. While most of us may just scroll through Twitter and check Snapchat stories while going about our business, it’s evident from house viewing that some enjoy a nice pint and a tube of Pringles on the toilet. Why wait until you’ve finished when you can dine and poop at the same time?

Nothing like starting prinks early

These conditions aren’t just a one-off, everyone in Brighton knows about them. One third- year literature student said: “We thought we had found our dream home, it looked perfect on the viewing, but we quickly found out that slugs can somehow enter every nook and cranny of the house, and join us at about 9 every night. When we moved in, there were also pubes and dead insects in equal measure in one of the desks, so God knows what the previous guy had been up to”.

Everyone hypes up house-hunting as the time to find your dream pad, but it’s everything but. Break out the marigolds and anti-bacterial, and you best not be afraid of slugs, moths and spiders.