Choosing postgraduate accommodation in London

Most accommodation searches start with a map and a budget, and most of them end in a spreadsheet that has stopped being useful. The listings all describe the same things in the same words, the photographs are taken with the same lens, and after a dozen of them the differences that actually matter have disappeared underneath the ones that do not. What follows is the short list of things worth comparing, and why the rest can wait.

Start with the commute, not the postcode

A studio that looks cheap on paper stops being cheap the moment it adds forty minutes each way to your day. Before anything else, work out how long it takes to reach your department at nine in the morning — not on a quiet Sunday — and treat that number as the first filter.

The difference between a fifteen-minute walk and a forty-minute journey with a change is about seven hours a week. Over a two-semester year that is the better part of a working month spent standing on platforms, and it is time you will want back in March when a deadline lands.

Check the journey properly rather than trusting the straight-line distance. A building three miles away on a single Tube line is often closer in practice than one a mile away that needs a bus and a change, and journey planners set to a weekday rush hour will tell you which is which in a couple of minutes.

Read what the rent actually covers

Postgraduate accommodation is usually quoted as an all-in weekly figure, but “all in” means different things in different buildings. Check whether utilities, contents insurance, the gym and the internet are inside the number or bolted on afterwards.

A headline rent that excludes electricity and charges separately for a gym membership can land twenty pounds a week above one that looked more expensive at first glance. Ask for the total annual cost rather than the weekly figure — it is the number you will actually pay, and it makes two buildings genuinely comparable.

It is also worth asking what happens to the deposit, when it is returned, and what the building counts as fair wear and tear. A reputable operator will have a clear answer ready; a vague one is worth noticing.

Match the contract to your course

A one-year taught masters and a three-year doctorate need very different contracts. A 51-week tenancy that runs past your submission date is money spent on an empty room, and a 44-week one that ends before it is a move you did not plan for.

Taught masters courses in the UK typically run from late September to a dissertation deadline in August or September, which is close to a full year of occupancy. Research students have more flexibility and often more need of it, particularly if fieldwork takes them out of the city for a term.

Ask whether the contract can be extended if your submission date moves, and on what terms. Deadlines shift more often than anybody plans for, and the answer to that question is easier to get before you sign than after.

Visit if you can, and ask the residents

Photographs tell you about the room. They tell you nothing about whether the lifts work, how the building sounds at eleven at night, or whether the study spaces are actually usable in exam season. If you can visit, go on a weekday when the building is occupied rather than at a weekend when it is not.

If a visit is not possible — and for international students it usually is not — ask for a video tour of the specific room type you are considering, not the show flat. Ask how long maintenance requests take. The answers, and how readily they come, tell you most of what you need to know.