{"id":26137,"date":"2015-11-02T14:10:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T19:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=26137"},"modified":"2015-11-02T15:57:48","modified_gmt":"2015-11-02T20:57:48","slug":"international-house-hunting-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2015\/11\/02\/international-house-hunting-101\/","title":{"rendered":"International House Hunting 101"},"content":{"rendered":"A few weeks ago, I (finally) moved into a permanent apartment here in Edinburgh. If you\u2019re thinking \u201cbut a few weeks ago was the middle of October! School started in September! What are you up to?\u201d you are not alone in your surprise about my living situation.\r\n\r\n\"P1060670\"<\/a>\r\n\r\nSaying that I\u2019ve had some major housing problems while on exchange would probably be an understatement. I\u2019m talking a few panicked weeks of constant house hunting, moving into a very mouldy basement apartment, moving out of said apartment and into a hotel, another panicked bout of house hunting, and then finally settling down in a wonderful (if very expensive) flat. It all turned out OK, but I want to save you from some of my heart ache by offering up some of my hard-won advice. And with second semester approaching relatively quickly, I thought it would be a good time to talk about housing, for all of you exchange students who are heading off on exchange in January.\r\n\r\nSo let\u2019s start at the beginning. You\u2019ve decided to go off on exchange \u2013 now you need to decide where you want to live. This decision boils down to choosing between two basic options. Option one is to live in your host university\u2019s student accommodation. Many schools will guarantee exchange students a place in residence, and this is a great, easy way to sort out your accommodation. Option two is to look for your own off-campus accommodation.\r\n\r\nThere are pros and cons to both of these options of course. If you live in residence, you\u2019ll walk into a ready-made community where there are always tons of fun events going on, and you won\u2019t have to worry about things like where you\u2019re going to stay when you arrive, or how you\u2019re going to find furniture. But you\u2019ll probably end up paying a bit more, you might not get a ton of choice in the kind of accommodation you get, and you might feel a bit out of place amongst first-year students if you\u2019re a bit older.\r\n\r\nIf you decide to live off campus, you\u2019ll get more freedom in choosing where you live and who you live with, you\u2019ll probably save a bit of money, and you\u2019ll get to experience your new city in a way that doesn\u2019t totally revolve around university. On the other hand, you have to actually find<\/em> an apartment to live in, which is easier said than done, and you\u2019ll have to make a much more concerted effort to get involved with campus life.\r\n\r\nPersonally, I chose not to live in residence. I\u2019m in the final semester of my degree, and I\u2019m 22 years old, so I wasn\u2019t sure that living with first year students would be right for me. But all of my friends who chose to live in residence are loving it! It\u2019s just about choosing what\u2019s right for you.\r\n\r\n
\"Accommodation<\/a>
Accommodation services: your new best friend<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nIf you do take the off-campus route, there are a few things you should keep in mind. It\u2019s trickier finding a place than you might think \u2013 I speak from experience!\r\n
    \r\n\t
  1. Do some research before you arrive.<\/strong> I didn\u2019t \u2013 I just assumed that it would be easy enough to find a place. If I had done some research, I would have learned that Edinburgh\u2019s housing market is really competitive, and that crowds of international students arrive here every fall, looking for a place to live. Knowing this could have saved me a lot of stress and made me a little more prepared. Researching things like average rent prices, taxes, and tenancy laws is also useful.<\/li>\r\n\t
  2. Have a back up plan. <\/strong>I found myself a short-term rental for the entire month of September, thinking I would probably find a permanent place way before the end of the month. It ended up taking much<\/em>, much<\/em> longer than I expected, and I was super grateful that I had rented my place for all of September as a back-up plan.<\/li>\r\n\t
  3. Get advice.<\/strong> It\u2019s really hard to know what kind of apartment you should be looking for, where you should be looking, and what the normal housing practices and rules are in a new country. But most universities have a housing or accommodation service that will be more than happy to help you figure these things out. Don\u2019t be shy!<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\nSo that\u2019s all the advice I have for you! You\u2019ve got lots of housing options when you\u2019re away on exchange \u2013 you just have to decide what\u2019s right for your situation. And wherever you decide to live, it\u2019s going to be a lot of fun. It\u2019s all part of the adventure of living abroad.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few weeks ago, I (finally) moved into a permanent apartment here in Edinburgh. If you\u2019re thinking \u201cbut a few weeks ago was the middle of October! School started in September! What are you up to?\u201d you are not alone in your surprise about my living situation.\r\n\r\n\"P1060670\"<\/a>\r\n\r\n
    Continue reading “International House Hunting 101”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26137"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26137"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26159,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26137\/revisions\/26159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}