Written by Suchita Thepkanjana
As the spring flowers and longer days slowly phase out the winter, a not-so-beautiful reality also comes into view—the dilemma of where to live for the next academic cycle. While some may opt to battle incoming freshers for LSE accommodation, most will end up deciding to privately rent a flat.
I myself was one of the latter: a wide-eyed, excited first year ready to dive into the idyllic university life where I’d spend the best years of my 20’s in chic central London flats with my closest friends! At least, that’s what binge-watching ten seasons of Friends made me believe living in a flat would be like.
So you can imagine my bitter disappointment when I was hurled head-first into the deep end of the swimming pool called ‘the London Rental Market’, notorious for being the peak of frenzied competition and preposterously-high price mark-ups
According to an article by The Independent, London rent prices have increased 31% since 2021, and there are now an average of 25 households competing over each property on the market. Given this immense pressure to beat rival renters, it is no surprise that 40% of private renters are now paying £1,200 above the advertised rate for their property. Put simply, flat hunting is London’s Hunger Games—while it lacks the same amount of death and gore, it is nonetheless a brutal rite of passage into adulthood. The intense, cutthroat nature of flat hunting gives any naïve young teenager no choice but to toughen up and face the adult world, acquiring vital survival skills and experiences in the process.
I entered my flat hunting journey well-mannered and optimistic, and came out of it selfish, confrontational, and significantly better-equipped to face the real world. This is the story of how flat hunting made me a worse person but more importantly, a better adult.
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It was mid-March 2024, I was 19 years old, and the only stressful thing on my mind was a GV100 essay. I was chilling. That is, until three of my friends announced triumphantly that after less than one week of searching, they had signed a contract on an affordable yet beautiful, fully-furnished flat located 10 minutes’ walk from LSE campus and available in September. For lifting a single finger, they were spared from the trenches that was the London Rental Market, just like that! And they just had to rub it in, showing off their new pristine blue walls and queen-sized beds to me for the next few weeks.
I had never felt so jealous in my life.
And thus became my first lesson in adulthood: the only thing you can do with such insurmountable levels of jealousy is to turn it into fiery, tunnel-visioned determination.
I officially embarked on my flat search with three other girls by spending a good 60% of my waking hours doom-scrolling on Zoopla and Rightmove, logging any prospects on a meticulously-color-coded spreadsheet. If my friends could find the perfect flat almost immediately, surely this would be easy for me too, right?
150+ unsuccessful entries on the spreadsheet and five dismal flat-viewings later, I could not be more wrong. The determination I had, then, was not so pure anymore — despair, frustration, and anger began to seep in, and I started having nightmares of myself drowning in hordes of renters making absurdly-high offers on squalid flats.
Most of all, I was outraged and disillusioned at how ‘unfair’ this whole thing was: Why is it that after weeks of cold-calling and begging letting agents, I have nothing, while my friends got the flat of their dreams when they barely even tried?
My fantasy of the perfect Friends-esque life was flying straight out the window, and with them went my morals. Suddenly, righteousness, kindness, and selflessness didn’t mean as much to me as an affordable two-bedroom did.
I got exclusive first-viewings on flats by pitting agents from the same company against each other. I made promises to put down an offer in exchange for lowered rent, only to pull out of the deal last-minute. I woke up in the middle of the night, strategising on how to steal flats under offer from someone else. I once led an agent on for so long with my false promises, she scolded me for wasting her time, and I scolded her right back. Worst of all, I turned my back on the girls I had promised to move in with, after secretly securing a two-person flat with another friend and not telling them until we legally sealed the deal – a decision I still find egregious today.
Alas, in April of 2024, I finally signed a contract on a flat that I loved—reasonably-priced, spacious, close to campus, and pretty much perfect! I had finally succeeded.
I had also become more insensitive, impatient, and irritatingly-persistent by the end, but I arguably would have failed more intensely and miserably if I hadn’t changed. Furthermore, it was these newly-obtained skills and life lessons that, while sometimes morally-questionable, will likely be indispensable to living in the adult world later on.
Flat hunting taught me how to negotiate, sugar-coat, and even straight-up lie when I needed it most. It taught me to make demands, push harder, and not back down. Most of all, it taught me the experience of wanting something so damn bad and refusing to stop until I get it.
Most importantly, flat-hunting taught me that, just like in real adulthood, not everything will feel ‘fair’. The amount of hard work you put in does not guarantee proportionate success (weeks of toil may not earn you the same glorious Holborn bachelor pad someone else landed after two days of minimal effort). But with the right amount of relentlessly abrasive pestering, amorality, sucking-up, and most importantly, desperate determination, you might end up pretty satisfied (in a warm and cozy flat on the Strand) one day.
While I may have dramaticised my flat hunting experience to make a point, I must emphasise just how privileged I am to be able to afford rent at all. And in Central London, no less.
Every Friday, a line of homeless people gather just down the street from my flat for food donations. They are a constant reminder of what happens when the rental market does not adequately serve its people. Many people are faced with homelessness after being forced to move out of their homes and unable to find an affordable and adequate flat in time. In fact, it is this “lack of safe and affordable housing” that underpins the massive homelessness problem in the UK, according to Crisis UK.
For more information, check the Renters’ Reform Coalition, a campaign to increase and strengthen renters’ rights in England, at: https://rentersreformcoalition.co.uk/
