Students queued from as early as 1am outside Cardens, the estate agents, so they could rent their preferred accommodation for next year.
When Cardens opened for business at 9am on Monday (November 7) staff were greeted with a long queue of students. The students had queued for up to eight hours in the cold because Cardens were releasing their list of student properties for the next academic year.
These Exeter students were really keen to rent a nice house next year https://t.co/aY8kWovW1m pic.twitter.com/Sri6tLV1MI
— Gordon Richardson (@gordorichardson) November 7, 2016
Agency director Jon Carden, was quoted in the Exeter Express and Echo as having said:
“This year is particularly busy. I think they started queuing at 1am.”
Jon Cardens, Agency Director at Cardens
“Today is the launch of the accommodation list for next year, so students are choosing where they want to live in September,” said Jon. “It seems to get further in advance every year.
Within 2 hours of opening Students@Cardens had let 50 properties out of the around 300 student houses and apartments Cardens represent.
“The university housing fair is on November 22 – this is the first year it has been before Christmas. It’s usually in January but by then a lot of the agents will have let most of their properties.”
The standard of accommodation is improving every year. Rents have been gradually increasing over the last few years and on the back of that tenants quite rightly expect a decent standard of accommodation.”
Jon Carden also said “terraced houses are very popular with the UK based students especially.”
“It’s almost a rite of passage…almost the last thing they want is a purpose built apartment block with a warden on the door.
They want a bit of freedom and somewhere they can have a barbecue in the summer.”
Recently Exeposé also covered a story on how student judges refused to pick an award winner in protest over rising rent prices.
