With the average cost of renting for a student being around £69-a-week there are huge variances in charges with some students paying less and others paying up to £118-a-week.
Student housing costs rise every year and in Birmingham they are paying an average of £61-a-week but for those students wanting to live nearer to the university their rents can rise to nearly £90-a-week.
Now, a group of students in the city have joined together to form the first co-operative for student housing in the UK and they have managed to land a £550,000 loan to realise their ambition of buying property and bringing in cheaper rents.
They will buy two five-bedroom houses and the properties will remain available for future students who join the co-operative.
The idea for the co-operative is to create a real home for a student and to provide a better service than letting agents and landlords.
However, the main purpose of the co-operative is to bring in cheaper rents.
The scheme is the brainchild of philosophy student Sean Farmelo, 21, who said he was moved to act because of the general poor standard of the student housing and the relatively high cost of renting.
He said: “Some of the houses are dumps and students have been taken for cash cows and no-one has done anything about it.”
Mr Farmelo said that he was paying more in rents then he was receiving in maintenance loans, which was leading to many people having to leave education.
Even with paying for the loan, management fees and maintenance costs, the co-operative believes a charge as little as £40-a-week and still leaves a viable business model.
They could charge less, they say, but they intend to carry out a full refurbishment of the properties every 15 years.
The funding is coming from Birmingham Co-operative Housing Services (BCHS) which does not normally loan out so much money to undergraduates, but those organising the student house have had previous experience of creating co-operative enterprises.
The students say they have no hope of meeting demand in the city which is home to 18,000 students paying between £60 and £160-a-week in rent.
Once the co-operative is established, the students say they plan to eventually own the houses from BCHS and help create other co-operatives around the country to establish cheaper rents.
