Sharing a large house or apartment is most common amongst the UK’s young and single population. Most 1 bedroom apartments in towns and cities are too expensive for one person to afford by themselves, so they are usually occupied by couples.

This means that single people get together and rent the bigger family homes between them. Renting a 3 bedroom apartment between 3 people, for example, always seems to work out cheaper. So if you are coming to the UK alone and looking to rent, it is probable that you will end up sharing a house or apartment with some new ‘housemates’.

Shared renting

If you are coming with friends then you may be looking to rent a place together, in which case you should read the section on ‘letting agents’ for more information about finding rented property.  Or you have a look at the "Find a.." tab for a selection of letting agents.

Finding a house-share as a single person is not possible through a letting agent, you will need to search for a place by yourself. This is quite easy to do, simply by buying the right newspapers and looking in the right places.

If you are coming to study then the best place to start is with your College or University, they will be able to provide you with all the information that you need to find yourself a room within a house-share with other students.

Where to look

If you are alone and arriving in the UK soon, there are many websites that you can visit where you will be able to place your own advert for free, letting people know who you are and where you are looking to live. This is great, because it helps you to make contact with potential housemates even before you have arrived in the UK.

If you are already here, you can speed things up by buying a copy of your local newspaper  and looking in the ‘classifieds’ section. Here you should find many adverts from people looking to fill their spare rooms. There are also magazines, called ‘free ads-papers’ available in all newsagents, just ask at the counter, these are usually full of ads for spare rooms in shared houses. Alternatively you should look on the advertising boards found in libraries and newsagents’ shop windows.

Finding housemates

When you go to look at the room, be prepare to be interviewed by the housemates. They will want to know what you do for a job, or how you are going to pay the rent, so be prepared to talk about your financial situation. People in the UK will discuss money quite openly in this situation so be honest and open with them.

Other questions they are likely to ask are: Do you smoke? How old are you? Are you in a relationship? What time do you go to bed? What’s your attitude to housework? This last one is where most problems come from when people house-share. There is always going to be one person who is much cleaner and another who is much messier than the average person, and the kitchen is usually the place where most arguments start (“Who ate my bread?” “Who used the frying pan and didn’t wash it up afterwards?”)

Ask if everyone has their own shelves in the kitchen and if there is a cleaning rota; these show an organised house and one less likely to have arguments. Also make sure that you find out if bills are included in the rent. Oh, and it’s best to not have a shared telephone in the house, World War III has broken out many times over arguments about the phone bill, so just avoid telephone politics altogether and get a mobile.

By John Hillman

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USEFUL WORDS

shared house / flat
house / flatshare
house / flatmate = a person you share a house or flat with
room mate = a person you share a room in a house or flat with
spare room = a room in someone’s house or flat which is available for rent
housework = work involved in taking care of a house e.g. cleaning, ironing, washing up
cleaning rota = a list of cleaning jobs that need to be done and the names of the people who will do them in turn
shared bills = dividing the household bills between all the house / flatmates

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Impersonal Pronouns

To express general feelings and opinions (i.e. not necessarily those of the speaker), use you, we or they:
Nowadays, you can choose to get a cleaner if you don’t like housework

To include yourself, it’s better to use we:
Nowadays, we can choose to get a cleaner if we don’t like housework

To exclude yourself, use they:
They behave really badly in some shared houses

Use they to refer to people in authority:
Did you know they’ve increased parking charges in this area?

Use one in formal language to mean people in general including yourself:
One feels sorry for people who struggle to pay the rent
Use one as a subject or object pronoun, and as a reflexive pronoun:
One tends to learn to look after oneself if one lives alone

NB The use of one to mean I is considered unnecessarily formal, like speaking to the Queen! 
One would like to attend the ceremony, but one is too busy