Best Places to Find Student Housing for Next Year

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Finding accommodation for your first year of uni is often straightforward - many freshers will live in halls of residence on campus. But if you’re searching for private student accommodation for the first time, it can be daunting and difficult to know where to start.

As the UK’s market-leading student accommodation advertising platform and utility management service provider, we’ve created this guide with tips on the best places to find student housing for 2026-27. Before you start your search, though, there are a few things you need to tick off:

Who will you live with?

If you’re wanting to move in with other students, you’ll be living with them for a year - so it’s important to be happy with your choice! And of course, you can’t start searching for a property until you know how many people it needs to accommodate.

Masters student Sophie Layton has been through the student house-hunting process several times - she’s written this guide to deciding who to live with at uni.

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What kind of student housing do you want?

House or halls? 6-bed terrace or 1-bed flat? There are more types of student housing available now than ever, and having a strong idea of what kind of accommodation you want will shape your housing search. If you’re searching in a group, it’s helpful to discuss up front whether any of you have any essentials - e.g. a garden, or somewhere with parking spaces, or specific areas the accommodation needs to be near, so you’re all on the same page.

We’ve broken down the pros and cons of each type of student accommodation here, including the personal experiences of students who’ve lived in each.

When should you start looking for next year?

Each city and uni has its own nuances as to when student properties begin to be advertised for the following academic year, although for many places this is in October-November.

While you shouldn’t rush into house-hunting before you’re ready, equally if you leave it too late the best student properties will have been snapped up and the process will feel more stressful, so it’s helpful to be aware of when student demand in your city peaks. We’ve got more tips about when to start searching here.

What else should you have ready?

It’s helpful to have thought about who can act as your guarantor - you’ll usually need one to sign for a rental property, and who is eligible to serve as your guarantor may vary between letting agents. You’ve guessed it, we’ve got a guide for this too - read more about how guarantors work in UK student accommodation here.

If you’re searching in a group, it’s also useful to have the contact details for everyone handy to make it easier to book viewings as some agents might ask you to complete application forms.

Lastly, some agents and landlords will ask for a deposit or reservation fee to secure a property - so although obviously you won't know exactly how much this will be when you start searching, it's worth keeping in mind you might need to pay this and keep some funds back accordingly.

Best places to search for student accommodation

Letting agencies

Local student letting agencies can be a great place to start your search. Letting agents act as a middleman between you and the landlord. Their knowledge of the local student market can also help them recommend multiple properties which meet your criteria, and you’ll be able to speak to them face-to-face in their offices.

You’ll see ‘for rent’ boards outside student housing as you’re walking around, so if you see a place you love the look of, you’ll be able to get the agent’s details from there.

Landlords

Renting from a landlord means you’ll have direct contact with the property owner, removing the middleman. Some universities have a database of accredited landlords in your city.

However, landlords may not be as available as letting agents to respond to queries, and they may not have other properties to show you if your first choice is unavailable.

Marketplace platforms

Being able to see all your options in one place removes a lot of the hassle of student house-hunting. That’s exactly what platforms like UniHomes provide - we work with a wide range of letting agents across the UK to showcase the best student accommodation in each city from across the market. This means you can easily compare and filter your options to search by area, price and accommodation type/number of bedrooms.

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Bills included is a bonus

While there are other marketplace platforms for student accommodation, with UniHomes the properties already have bills included, making house-hunting even easier. In a survey of 183 UniHomes customers in 2025, 77% of students said they’d started their property search with UniHomes - but of those who looked elsewhere first, 67% said the fact properties on UniHomes are bills-included was a key reason why they moved their search to our platform.

But fear not - if you’ve already found accommodation elsewhere, you can still use our student utility bills packages for one easy monthly payment split equally between housemates.

Since 2015 we’ve helped thousands of UK students streamline the search for their next student home by making the process stress-free.

Start the search for a student house or flat for next year today!