Living with friends
- Do you all have the same attitude to tidiness?
Compatability quiz
There are many people whose company you can enjoy in the Student Union bar but who you would not enjoy living with. Successfully sharing a house with someone requires a completely different set of skills from enjoying a good night out with them or even living in the same corridor in a College or University residence.To illustrate this, try answering the following quiz:
1. Which of the following most typifies your attitude to tidiness?
a) It’s important that everyone pulls their weight (ie housework rotas).
b) So long as the washing up is done, I can live with some clutter.
c) Can’t say that tidiness has ever been hugely important to me.
2. Which of the following most typifies your attitude to noise?
a) I’m here to study and need peace and quiet to do this.
b) So long as you turn down the music when I need to get to sleep, I’m easy going.
c) I want to live in a party house. I can put up with your noise, if you can put up with mine.
3. What time do you usually go to sleep?
a) I have a lot of early starts and so I’m usually asleep by 11pm.
b) If I’ve got a deadline to meet I can sometimes stay up all night but usually I’m asleep anytime between 12pm and 2am.
c) I’m a part-time vampire and do not appreciate the benefits of daylight.
If you answered mostly As, you should not consider living with Cs. You will almost certainly begin to fight at some stage. This is not to say that As are more reasonable than Cs, it just means that you have different perspectives.
Other points to consider
- Friends staying overnight, and longer periods—if the flat is for four, how will you feel when you are forced into sharing with six or seven?
- Do you all have a comparable income? Tensions can occur when some of the group can go pubbing and clubbing a lot and one or more of the group can barely afford to eat.
- Are you all in agreement on the length of the lease, even if it is 12 months? What happens if some of the group leave at the end of 9 months—who pays the rent for the rest of the tenancy? See Contracts.
Before you take the decision to form a group to go househunting, you should have a frank discussion about expectations, e.g. rules about guests, cleaning, washing-up, sharing food, payment of bills, when the heating should be on, etc.
Spending time discussing these matters now will avoid small individual irritations or big problems building up into irretrievable situations, and you will still be friends at the end of your tenancy!
How many people to share with?
- In large households there is usually a problem with tidiness.
In general the more people you share with, the cheaper it is. Therefore, someone living in a two bed flat will pay more for their room than someone living in an equivalent (area and quality) four bed house. However, once you go beyond four, there are no additional savings to be made. Properties with five or more tenants may need to be licensed and the landlord may pass the costs of this onto the tenants. For more on licensing, please click here.
Another reason why smaller groups are often a better idea is that when you have large groups renting (i.e. five or more) the state of cleanliness in the house or flat will almost inevitably deteriorate. Once you have done other people's washing up two or three times, you are likely to do what everyone else in the house is doing i.e. pick out the items you need from the festering mess in the sink, wash them up, use them and then replace them back into the rancid pile of dirty pots, pans and plates.
If the house does descend into this kind of mess during the tenancy, you are also likely to have a problem with mice. Mice are a London epidemic and need very little encouragement to invade your house. Therefore, if you don't like mice and tidiness is important to you, you will probably need to consider living with a smaller group.
In addition, if you are looking for a central London property, you will need to limit the size of your group. There are very few four or five bedroom properties in central London. Typically, you will find one or two bed flats with a living room that you can convert into a third bedroom. For central London properties, in order to maximise your chances of finding somewhere, you should not really consider groups larger than three.