Where to Live
Living at home
A significant, and growing, number of first-year students, twice as many in London, live at home and the reasons advanced are many and varied. There are clearly pros and cons but one potential disadvantage is to treat university as a nine-to-five job and risk missing the whole university experience. Stay-at-home students are likely to make fewer friends and to feel rather detached from campus activities but there is no evidence that their academic work suffers. As a general rule, the new universities recruit many more local students. This being so, their students are twice as likely to opt for staying at home than those at the old universities.
Reasons for living at home (%)
To save money or cut costs 10
Just want to 16
Cannot afford to live away 9
Near to university of choice 14
To concentrate on my studies 2
For an easy life; to be looked after 3
Parents wanted me to 14
Have a family 10
Other reasons 22
UNITE Student Experience Report 2006
Another feature of the current scene is “buy to rent” – accommodation bought by parents to house the student member of the family. With mortgage interest rates still relatively low and the stock market still rather nervous, some parents are opting to buy a small house or flat, perhaps defraying the expense by charging rent to fellow students. Such properties, if large, are still subject to HMO licensing. However, “buy to rent” is not without its pitfalls, particularly in those university towns where “areas of student housing restraint” are being introduced, where there is increasing competition from national developers of purpose-built student housing, and where the universities, themselves, are upgrading their own residences.
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