Moving to london can be very stressful, so I want to talk you through the steps that
I went through to figure out where I was going to live during my time here at LSE.
Step one is to decide between student and private housing.
They both have their advantages and disadvantages,
so it’s really a matter of what you’re looking for.
In student halls you can live near other students, some halls come with a meal plan, and they’re
generally a little bit easier to book because you do it through the school.
On the other hand, with private housing, you get more options for where in the city you
want to live, you also get a little bit more flexibility on the timeline of your contract,
so when you move in, when you move out, how long the contract is, and it gives you more
options for customization of services, so like if you’re looking for somewhere pet friendly,
private housing is probably more helpful for that.
I chose private housing because I had been out of school for a little while so I was
used to having a place of my own and I also moved here with my partner, so it gave us
the option to have more space, a kitchen and bathroom to ourselves, that kind of thing.
If you’re planning on living in a student hall, you can watch Saemi’s vlog on Butler’s Wharf
or Elli’s vlog on Rosebery Hall for their insights and tours of the halls.
But if you’re going to live in private housing like I did, keep watching the video.
Step two, pick a location.
London is so big and there are so many neighborhoods all with their own personality and it’s
and it’s really hard to kind of get a feel for that if you haven’t lived here before.
So, what I did to get over that hump was look at travel blogs and see
what people who have been here before had to say about it.
I also reached out to LSE alum and asked them where they lived, where their classmates lived,
where they wish they could have lived, or where they would live if they had a do-over
and that really gave me a good feel for it.
What also helps is making a location-specific wishlist, so for us that wishlist was living near
a park because we love being outside and we wanted to be able to get some scenic fresh air.
We also wanted to be within walking distance of the school, so for me that was an hour,
I wanted to be able to get there within an hour, tops.
And then the last thing was we wanted to be close to a tube station, so that we could travel
to different parts of the city, meet up with friends, explore outside the city and just
have that at a convenient location for us.
Those are just the factors that were important for us, but it’s different for everyone.
Some people might want to live closer to where they work or some people might have a longer
standard of how far they’re willing to commute, so it’s just a matter of what you care about
and that will help you narrow it down.
Once you have an idea of where you want to look it’s time for step three, decide on features.
You need to decide what services and features you want your apartment to have, so for us,
we didn’t want to be on the ground floor, we wanted a washer/dryer inside our unit,
and we wanted it to be furnished.
So those are just some of the things we chose but there are plenty of other things out there
like you could want a certain amount of bedrooms, or you could want like a dishwasher.
You also need to determine your budget because how big your budget is determines how many
of these features you can have.
Some other things to keep in mind when putting together your budget is that there’s more
than just the cost of rent.
You have to pay for electric, for water, for wifi, and there’s also a local tax that
students don’t have to pay, but if you moved here with a partner like I did,
you have to factor that into your budget.
Step four is review your options.
Once you know where you’re looking and what you’re looking for,
you can start to review possible options.
There are plenty of sites out there like RightMove or OpenRent that let you narrow down options
by all the factors that we just talked about so location and amenities and things like that
and then you can check them out and contact agents and owners if you’re interested.
If there is one thing you remember after you leave this video, do not rent an apartment
without seeing it in person first.
There were so many places that, on paper, checked all of our boxes, and then we went in person
and all of the windows faced a wall or there was a construction site or you could hear
every conversation from every human being that walked outside on the sidewalk.
And it’s just a nightmare so you need to make sure you see it first.
That means you have to move to london before you have a flat, which sounds scary,
but it’s totally doable.
So, we came early, we booked an AirBnB for like two weeks and we just made a million
appointments to view apartments and we went every day, five or six walking all around
the city checking them all out and eventually we found one that we were in love with.
There are plenty of properties around the city and there’s no need to settle, but
if you do find one that you like, you need to jump on it, because chances are you’re
probably looking for an apartment the same time as all the other international students
out there that are trying to move for the school year so you want to make sure that
it’s not scooped up by someone else.
So these are the steps I went through, I know the process is super stressful,
but, hopefully, this will help you find a place that you can call home.