Student House Checklist UK: Before You Sign

The landlord is legally required to provide certain safety documents. Do not accept excuses about these. They are not optional.

Gas Safety Certificate: Every property with gas must have an annual Gas Safe inspection. The certificate must be dated within the last 12 months. If the landlord cannot produce it on viewing, walk away.

Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR): Since 2020, landlords in England must commission an EICR every five years and provide a copy to tenants before they move in. Check the date on the report. If it is older than five years, that is a legal breach.

Energy Performance Certificate (EPC): Legally required to be E-rated or above. Student properties with F or G ratings are not legally lettable. The EPC also tells you what your heating bills might look like, which matters when 65% of students are already stretching their budgets (Unipol, 2025).

Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms: At minimum, one smoke alarm per floor and a carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a gas appliance. Test them on the viewing. Press the button. If the landlord says they work but has not tested them, that tells you something.

Missing certificates are not negotiable. They are the minimum legal standard, not a bonus.

Go through the property methodically, room by room. Do not let the landlord or agent rush you.

Damp and mould: Look at ceiling corners, behind wardrobes, around window frames, and under sinks. A faint musty smell in a furnished room often means mould behind the furniture. Move things if you need to. Damp is expensive to fix and genuinely bad for your health. Fixing structural damp is the landlord's responsibility, but you will be living with it until they do.

Heating: Turn the boiler on. Run it for two minutes. Check that radiators in every room get warm. A property with broken radiators in January is not liveable. Do not assume it will be fixed between viewing and move-in unless it is written into the tenancy agreement.

Hot water: Run the kitchen and bathroom taps. How long does it take to get hot water? A 90-second wait is a problem if six people are sharing one bathroom.

Windows and locks: Open every window. Check that they close and lock properly. Ground floor and basement windows without key locks are a security risk and may void your contents insurance.

Broadband: Ask the specific broadband speed and provider, not a vague claim about 'superfast fibre.' Student areas are often underserved. If you are doing coursework that depends on connectivity, check Ofcom's coverage checker for that postcode before signing.

Kitchen appliances: Turn on the oven, the hob, and the extractor fan. Check the fridge seals. If the washing machine is included, run a quick cycle if possible. Broken appliances are the most common post-move-in dispute after deposits.

Document everything with photos on your phone, timestamped, during the viewing. Not after moving in. During.

Student properties are targeted for burglary at disproportionate rates. According to Martin & Co's property viewing checklist (2025), security features including door locks, window locks, external lighting, and alarm systems are among the most commonly overlooked items on student viewings.

Check the front door lock. Many student contents insurance policies have specific security requirements for door locks. If the lock is insufficient for your policy, your insurer may refuse a claim after a break-in. Ask whether the locks were changed between the last tenants and your tenancy. Most landlords do not change them automatically.

External lighting matters. If the path from the street to the front door is unlit, that is both a safety risk and a sign the landlord is not maintaining the property. Working external lights are cheap to install. Their absence is a choice.

Check whether a burglar alarm is installed and whether it is functional. Ask who has the code, how it is managed between housemates, and what happens if it goes off accidentally. These are not paranoid questions. They are practical ones that prevent arguments later.

If the property has a back garden or shared alley access, check the rear gate. Rear access to student properties is a common entry point. A gate without a lock is a problem.

Poor security costs you more than a burglary. It costs you the peace of mind to actually sleep in the place.

The tenancy agreement is a legal contract. Sign it without reading it and you are responsible for every clause inside it.

Joint tenancy vs individual tenancy: Most shared student houses use a joint tenancy. Every housemate signs one contract for the whole property. This means if one person stops paying rent, the others are legally liable for their share. Know this before you sign. If one of your housemates loses their job or drops out, you pay their rent until the landlord recovers it.

Break clause: Check whether the contract has one. Most 12-month student tenancies do not include a break clause, which means you are committed for the full year. If you or a housemate needs to leave early, the landlord can pursue unpaid rent for the remainder of the term.

Deposit protection: Confirm how your deposit will be protected and which scheme your landlord uses. Ask for these details at the point of signing. If they cannot tell you, that is a red flag.

Permitted occupants: Check whether the contract specifies who can stay in the property and for how long. Some contracts restrict overnight guests to a maximum number of nights per month. Unusual, but it happens.

Maintenance responsibilities: The contract should clarify what the landlord fixes and what the tenants are responsible for. Anything left vague will later be argued as the tenant's problem.

Read every clause. If something is unclear, ask for it in writing before signing. Once you sign, the vague clause means whatever the landlord says it means in a dispute.

Most house disputes are not about the landlord. They are about the people you live with.

Establishing ground rules before the first box is unpacked is not awkward. It is efficient. Deciding cleaning rotas, bill splits, and quiet hours in month three, after resentment has already built up, is the awkward version.

Cleaning rota: Who cleans which shared spaces and how often. Write it down. A rota that exists only as a verbal agreement lasts about three weeks.

Bills: Agree who manages each bill and how contributions are collected. Unequal bill management creates unequal power dynamics. One person chasing five others for money every month will eventually stop doing it, and then you have an unpaid bill. Apps like those integrated with Roome, including Homebox and Cino, handle shared bill splitting so no one person carries the admin burden.

Guests and partners: Agree on how often partners can stay over, whether guests can use communal spaces freely, and what notice is expected. This conversation is easier before anyone has a partner staying four nights a week.

Noise and study hours: Especially important around exam periods. If someone works nights and needs to sleep in the afternoon, the house needs to know that before move-in.

Shared food vs personal food: A no-shared-fridge policy avoids every 'who ate my leftovers' argument. If you want shared staples, agree a cost split upfront.

These are not rules that restrict people. They are agreements that stop small irritations from becoming house-ending conflicts. The Accommodation for Students guide (2025) flags establishing cleaning rotas and respecting personal space as the two most effective ways to maintain a functional shared house. That tracks with experience.

If you are still figuring out who you will be living with, Roome matches students using a Vibe Score based on lifestyle, energy, and interests. Finding compatible housemates before you commit to a contract is the most upstream version of conflict prevention.

Move-in day is not just logistics. It is evidence collection.

The inventory: Your landlord should provide a detailed inventory listing every item in the property and its condition. Go through it item by item on move-in day. If a sofa is stained, note it. If a wall has a scuff, photograph it. If the inventory says 'good condition' and the reality is 'scratched,' amend the document in writing and get the landlord or agent to countersign. Everything you do not flag becomes your responsibility at the end of the tenancy.

Meter readings: Take gas, electricity, and water meter readings on the day you move in. Photograph them with a timestamp. Send them to the energy supplier by email so there is a written record. Do not rely on the previous tenant's final reading being accurate.

Wi-Fi router location and account details: Get the broadband account login before you move in, not after. Setting up the broadband when you arrive and discovering the account is still in a previous tenant's name costs days.

Key count: Confirm the number of keys for each lock, including communal doors if relevant. If the contract says four keys and you receive three, note the discrepancy in writing to the agent on move-in day.

The move-in process feels like a formality. It is not. Accurate inventory and meter readings are essential for protecting yourself during deposit disputes. Getting them right takes 45 minutes. Disputing a deducted deposit takes months.

For more on managing day-to-day shared living after you move in, see our Managing Shared Student House UK: Full Guide and our guide to Splitting Bills Student House UK: Fair Guide.

A checklist covers the property. It cannot tell you whether the people you are moving in with are compatible with how you actually live.

Roome is a free student lifestyle app built for UK students. It uses a Vibe Score, generated through an onboarding quiz, to match students based on lifestyle, energy, and interests. Not just 'are you tidy' but the fuller picture of how you live. Students verify their accounts using their university email, so you are only matching with genuine students, not random strangers.

Beyond housemate matching, Roome aggregates thousands of student property listings from trusted sources and student-only partners, refreshed daily, covering universities across the UK. You can filter by distance from campus, price, and number of bedrooms. Once you have a shortlist, you can create a house group inside the app, coordinate your search together, and keep everyone in one chat thread.

After you move in, Roome's bill splitting features, through its integrations with Homebox and Cino, handle the shared expenses that cause the most friction in shared houses: utilities, internet, and recurring household costs. No one person chasing everyone else. No spreadsheet passed around by WhatsApp.

Roome is 100% free for students. No hidden charges. If you are early in your search and still working out who you will live with, checking Roome before committing to a viewing group makes sense. Getting the checklist right matters less if you move in with people whose living habits make the house unworkable from week one.

For help finding compatible people before you even start house hunting, see our guide on How to Find Housemates for Uni in the UK.