London student flats: a Results Day guide

The useful question on a viewing isn't what the rent is, it's what the rent covers. Buildings differ enormously and the gap between two similar-looking monthly figures is often four or five bills.

Three things worth asking about specifically:

Amenities. You'll be thinking about the monthly budget right now, and amenities like having a full gym onsite can take care of some of these additional outgoings.

Council tax. Full-time students are normally exempt, and a flat where everyone is a full-time student usually pays none at all. The exemption has to be claimed from the council rather than arriving automatically, and it changes if someone in the flat isn't a student.

Broadband. Included WiFi can mean a proper connection to the flat. Ask about it now, before the 9am seminar joined from a frozen screen.

What all of it buys is one less thing to sort in a fortnight that already has too much in it. Nobody wants to be opening a council tax account and comparing energy tariffs in the third week of August.

What to look for when viewing student accommodation

Very few of us lie awake worrying about plumbing. The worry is the picture of an eighteen-year-old sitting alone in a room, in a city of nine million, in the third week of October.

Which is why the shared spaces are what you judge a building on. A bedroom can be assessed in thirty seconds. What sits outside the front door of the flat is what decides how the first term goes, so on a viewing, ask what residents use.

The residents' kitchen is the clearest example. Somewhere to cook for people at a table big enough for all of them, without anyone having to squeeze into a galley. Six of them attempting something far too ambitious for friends they met a fortnight ago, music on, the door propped open so whoever wanders past can join in. Making friends in first term is largely a numbers game, and a building like that puts more people in front of them without anyone having to be brave about it.

Around that sits the ordinary useful stuff. At The Eades the co-working space and the gym are both open around the clock, which matters more than it sounds when an essay is due at nine and the university library shut at eleven. There's a pool table, a tuck shop, three levels of amenities, and a garden terrace and roof terrace for the weeks when the flat feels small. There's also an art and design library, which is a strange and lovely thing to have downstairs.

Compare the monthly figure on its own and a Build to Rent flat usually sits above a standard let. Compare what's inside it, and what it does to the first three months of living away from home, and the difference narrows considerably.

None of it guarantees anyone a good first term. It does mean they aren't attempting one from behind a closed door.

Where to live in London, by university

Start with the journey to campus and work outwards, because the campus is the only fixed point. Everything else is a choice, and the choices interact.

The journey itself is more than a number of minutes. A single line with a seat at 8am is a different proposition from two changes and a bus, and what matters as much is whether it still runs at eleven at night, when they're coming back from a shift, a rehearsal or somebody's birthday. A twenty-five minute trip they'll happily make twice a day beats a fifteen minute one they'll come to resent.

Then there's what the area costs to live in once the rent is paid. Two neighbourhoods twenty minutes apart can differ enormously on a weekly shop, a pint, a haircut and a gym. Somewhere with a market, a decent supermarket and places to eat that aren't aimed at expense accounts does more for a student budget over a year than a slightly lower rent in a part of London where a coffee is five pounds.

Community matters just as much and is the easiest thing to miss on a viewing. Some areas hum in the evenings and at weekends. Others empty at six when the offices shut, which is a lonely place to be new. It's worth knowing whether there are other students nearby, whether there's anywhere to go on a Tuesday, and whether the building itself has enough going on to carry the quiet weeks.

Which of those things matters most depends on the person actually living there, and it's a conversation worth having before anyone books a viewing.

Why a Walthamstow flat can suit a UCL student

The Eades is the clearest example we have of how this works in practice. On paper it looks wrong for a UCL student: it's E17, a long way up the map, and no family drawing a circle round Bloomsbury would land on it.

Then you look at the line. The Victoria line is fast, it runs a night tube, and it goes more or less straight to the main campus. The journey home at midnight is the same journey as the one at nine in the morning, which is the part that decides whether someone actually goes out.

The rest is what's around the building. Walthamstow Market runs the length of the high street and is usually described as the longest in Europe, which in student terms means fruit and veg at market prices rather than another delivery order. The area is genuinely creative rather than marketed as such: the William Morris Gallery, a Soho Theatre venue, breweries, independent shops, people making things. The Sunday Times named it the best place to live in London in 2025 and listed it again for 2026, describing it as offering as much fun per square foot as anywhere in the capital.

There's also a University of Portsmouth campus in the middle of it, so it isn't a neighbourhood that empties out in term time. Your student won't be the only one there.

Set that against a building fifteen minutes from campus in a street that empties at six, and the far-away option starts to look like the sensible one. That's the sort of call we make every week.

Do you need a guarantor for a student flat?

The rules on private renting in England changed on 1 May, and one change works in your favour: nobody can ask for more than a month's rent in advance any more.

What replaces that big cheque is a guarantor: someone who agrees to cover the rent if the tenant doesn't. They will have a student loan and no employment history, so that someone is almost certainly going to be you.

If they're sharing, check whether you're guaranteeing their share of the rent or the whole flat's. Joint and several liability is common, and it's the thing parents most often don't realise they've agreed to.

Requirements differ from building to building, and if you're based overseas they differ again. Ask the negotiator showing you round rather than working it out yourself. That's a five-minute conversation and it's what they're there for.

London student accommodation: your questions answered