Go to our viewings diary and select alternative times / dates when you and your group are able to view a student house. Telephone or email lizzie@leydonlettings.co.uk with the times you are available and she will try to book you in for a viewing at a time that suits you. From October to February we have a lot of viewings so you may need to try and be a little flexible.

Ideally, yes. During the busy viewing season there is often not time to do a second viewing for the same group. You also risk losing a house you love to another full group if you are not all ready to make a decision.

Phone Leydon Letting Agents on 01227 713913 to see if the house you want is still available. Provided we are able to reserve the house, each person must pay an admin fee of £250.00. We will normally hold a house until the lunchtime after the day you tell us you would like to reserve a house in order to give you a chance to pay this. You will also need to email lizzie@leydonlettings.co.uk with the full names, home and university email addresses and mobile numbers of everyone in the group. We will then email you with all the details and documents you need.

We rarely agree to this just in case you decide you do not want to move in when you arrive. This could result in us having an empty house.

We do not do this because you may decline the house resulting in the loss of tenants who would otherwise have reserved the house meantime.

Before reserving your house for a further year, check it is still available  (phone or email Leydon Lettings to ensure it has not been reserved since advertising).  
Reserve your house for a further year and each person pays a reduced admin fee of £175.00.
Leydon Lettings will email all with the documents to be completed.

This fee initially demonstrates a students' commitment to rent a student house. Our further costs include all, but not exclusively:
CONTENTS INSURANCE: Leydon Lettings arrange contents insurance for all bedrooms through Endsleigh insurance.  After we provide Endsleigh with your contact details they will contact you with details of how to make a claim and so on (this is only for tenants who pay a £175.00 admin fee).
CLEANING: We do the end of tenancy clean at no cost to you.
TENANCY AGREEMENT: The fee covers costs of drafting, appointing and signing student tenancy agreements.
PERIPHERAL MATTERS: We assist with: Setting up student standing orders. Responding to and confirming rent related queries. Documenting guarantor forms. Liaising with students and parent guardians. Vetting tenant and guarantor suitability. Various requests to alter payments according to a variety of different course and university student loan release dates.
ANNUAL ADMINISTRATION: Each year we liaise with Canterbury City Council to help secure student exemption from council tax. Arranging garden maintenance without charge to tenants. Preparing student accounts and statements and providing students with these. Procuring and submitting references to and from employers, landlords, authorities and the like, filing references and finally shredding all information no longer required following a statutory time-lapse after termination of the tenancy. Perform inspections and reports. Take electric, gas and water meter readings.
ADMIN FEE REFUND: Leydon Lettings nevertheless provides a way for your admin fee to be reduced. Pay your entire years rent on 1st June (one month before the commencement of your tenancy) and we will refund 25% of your admin fee, in spite of all the above costs incurred. The logic behind our reduction policy, reflects time otherwise spent chasing rent payments, obviating the need to update your rent account at regular intervals. This is a very good option in times of low interest rates and particularly for overseas students making regular transfers from abroad, saving several transfer fees.

No,9 unless you reserved your house prior to Late October 2011 as advised.

If you are an existing group wishing to re-book but one or more housemates wish to leave, you need to find suitable replacements before we can reserve your house for you. If you cannot, we may be obliged to let your house to another group.
Alternatively, if you have already reserved your house but your group has since "shrunk" we will normally agree for you to find a substitute. 

There may be a small increase in rent, but we will give you a discount on any increase if you book before the end of October.  This does not mean you have until the end of October to decide.
A house is avaialble to any group prior to your rebooking.
Current groups are likely to secure first option to rebook.

Yes. We will forward this to you by email and arrange a date for you to come into the office to sign it.  Likewise we will to require new guarantor forms to reflect the new contract.

This fee initially demonstrates a students' commitment to rent a student house. Our further costs include all, but not exclusively:
CONTENTS INSURANCE: Leydon Lettings arrange contents insurance for all bedrooms through Endsleigh insurance.  After we provide Endsleigh with your contact details they will contact you with details of how to make a claim and so on (this is only for tenants who pay a £250.00 admin fee).
CLEANING: We do the end of tenancy clean at no cost to you.  
TENANCY AGREEMENT: The fee covers costs of drafting, appointing and signing student tenancy agreements.  See Documents.
PERIPHERAL MATTERS: We assist with: Setting up student standing orders. Responding to and confirming rent related queries. Documenting guarantor forms. Liaising with students and parent guardians. Vetting tenant and guarantor suitability. Various requests to alter payments according to a variety of different course and university student loan release dates.
ANNUAL ADMINISTRATION: Each year we liaise with Canterbury City Council to help secure student exemption from council tax. Arranging garden maintenance without charge to tenants. Preparing student accounts and statements and providing students with these. Procuring and submitting references to and from employers, landlords, authorities and the like, filing references and finally shredding all information no longer required following a statutory time-lapse after termination of the tenancy. Perform inspections and reports. Taking electric, gas and water meter readings.
ADMIN FEE REFUND: Leydon Lettings nevertheless provides a way for your admin fee to be refunded part. Pay your entire years rent on 1st June (one month before the commencement of your tenancy) and we will refund of 25% of your admin fee, in spite of all the above costs incurred. The logic behind our refund is that we save some time otherwise spent chasing rent payments, obviating the need to update your rent account at regular intervals. This is a very good option particularly for overseas students making regular transfers from abroad, saving them transfer fees.

For most of our houses there is no deposit.

1st July in any year marks the start of an academic year. You pay rent by 1 June in any year, one month prior to the start of each academic year   If you reserve a house later than this you pay immediately you reserve.  Until you pay your rent we may deny acces to your housemates.  After 1 June you might be away on holiday and unable to commuicate.  Since this could cause hardship to your housemates advanced payment normally resolves the problem.

Landlords pay a mortgage for twelve months regardless of whether the house is occupied. If we only charged rent for ten months of the year landlords may not afford to let their houses to students and would instead let to professionals - who reside 12 months and pay 12 months. In consideration for the fact that students may not reside for the whole year we offer a 50% discount during July for most houses. Some Leydon houses have no discount over the summer - this is related to supply and demand.  E.g. student houses are particularly expensive to buy close to univerity, making it uneconomic to grant any reduction in rents close to uni.

You may pay the second, third and fourth quarter's rent in line with your course student loan release dates. The first quarter is paid on 1st June, (one month in advance of the start of your contract on 1st July).  Student loans are not available until September and do not provide for student vacations.

You can pay monthly provided all your rent is paid in full by 1st April the year after your contract begins. In order to do this we ask you to pay your rent in eleven instalment beginning 1st June and ending 1st April the following year, rather than twelve instalments from 1st July to 1st June the following year. For more details please contact nina@leydonlettings.co.uk

We normally ask you to pay your rent by standing order. If you have not set up a standing order you will need to make a transfer to our account. Please go to our payments page for details.

If you are unable to pay your rent on the due date you need to contact us without delay to discuss this. If your rent becomes overdue and we have not heard from despite efforts to contact you, we may apply a late payment fee in accordance with your contract. If we have to send you reminders we may also charge for reminders, as per the contract. Any fees are applied at our discretion. If you communicate with us, we are unlikely to apply late fees.

If you are unsure whether your rent has been transferred to us by standing order, please check your bank statements to see if your rent has left your account.

Minimum size of room is 6.5 sq.m.
Maximum room size is up to 24 sq.m.
Your room will be somewhere in between these dimensions.

At the time of writing we have no couples, although a number of houses would be eminently suitable. Within a shared house we only accept couples if we are confident they will live in harmony with the whole group.

Even where we have 7-8 bedroom houses we do not let to more than six people. Where there are extra rooms we let two rooms to one or more tenants for roughly a single rent. If you are a group of seven or more you may find this disappointing. Planning and environmental restrictions rarely make more than six occupants viable. Few landlords in Canterbury let houses to more than six people.

This is best answered with ratios - these are continually improving with renovation. COMPARE LEYDON LETTINGS

• 53% of all tenants have a private ensuite. En-suites reduce the pressure on shared amenities. So even if you do not get an en suite you still benefit!
• 77.78% of all leydon lettings houses have a double amenities kitchen. Two sinks, two drainers, two hobs, two hoods etc.
• 95% of all student bedrooms have double beds.
• 80% of Leydon Lettings beds also have orthopedic mattresses.
• over 90% of all houses have had new energy efficient boilers fitted since 2003
• 88.89% of all houses have a dishwasher
• 100% of houses have washing machines.
• Such ratios are more than mere numbers and undoubtedly reduce the stress of sharing amenities, leaving you free to focus on student life.
• 90% of all bedroom doors have a 3 lever mortise lock.
• Many houses have conservatories and driveways.
• 100% of houses have double glazing!

Endsleigh Insurance.

£25

No, but you can insure these with Endsleigh for a small additional fee. Up to £500 laptop cover is £40 for the year to cover throughout the UK, the majority of our musical instrument cover is £20 for UK cover. You will need to contact Endsleigh directly to arrange additional cover.

Ensleigh can cover electrical items as a bundle up to a requested value and non-electrical items in the same way.

Via the Endsleigh website or over the phone on 0800 7834433. Each student will be sent login details for their summary of cover near their move in date.

Call the Endsleigh claims department on 01242 866610

You must contact the police within 24 hours of the item going missing. They will give you a crime reference number which you will need to give to Endsleigh in order to make a claim.

You have 24 hours to report the item lost or stolen to the police and seven days in which to contact Endsleigh with your crime reference number.

Items are covered for up to 35 consecutive days in an unoccupied property, anything over this period will not be covered.

All student policies include cover up to £5000 for anything the student is liable for in the property.

You can move in from 2pm, any day from the first day of your tenancy agreement. We do need to know what day and time you will arrive though in order to make the house ready for you. Please make sure you tell us the date you want to arrive on at least fourteen days in advance though. Note that if you have a discount on your house during July this will not apply for any period in which you reside during these months.  The minimum charge for a period of temporary summer residency is one week, so if you stay for a weekend you will pay the top up to reflect one week.  In any event you will never be charged more than 12 months rent for a 12 month tenancy!

Please come to our office during office hours to collect your front and bedroom door keys.

Please carry out an inventory using our inventory form see (Documents) and email the completed document to lizzie@leydonlettings.co.uk. We do not expect you to notice every defect immediately, but you should note them and let us know within weeks rather than days. Unless specifically stated, the house and furniture are deemed to be in new or good condition.

If your contract states that you pay full rent during July and August, you are entitled to move in. You will however need to pay bills for whatever period you reside.

If there is a discount on your house during July and August, you are not entitled to move in. However if you are willing to pay full rent and bills, then you may, provided you give us adequate notice. In the event you inform us too late, your house may be reserved by holiday makers or we may be doing renovation or maintenance works. If this were to happen we would attempt to find you alternative accommodation temporarily until your house is vacant or ready to occupy.

We do need notice of your move in date whether your house has a discounted rent or not, to ensure that the house is ready for your arrival.

Should students wish to continue their tenancy for a futher year regardless of discounts you are not normally required to vacate your possessions during any vacation.  Exceptions occur during renovation works etc.

Most students go home during July and August. In consideration for your agreeing to accept a reduced rent for July and August, we reserve the right to let to holiday makers during these months. This enables us to recover some of the loss we otherwise suffer by agreeing a discount for students. If you wish to reside over the summer, we give you the opportunity to inform us of this, but we need to know by June; the month before your contract begins. If you would prefer we did not let to others during your absence, you have the option to pay full rent.  We think this is fairer.

Should the house you have reserved be undergoing renovation or expect holiday makers resident (we give you the opportunity to request residence first) during July and August, we reserve the right to provide suitable alternative accommodation for such period. We also reserve the right to provide suitable alternative accommodation in the event of flood, fire, any other disaster or unforeseeable event at any time during your tenancy.

If you request to leave possessions in the house over the summer, these will be placed  in one bedroom until your return at your own risk. Where you pay half rent, the remaining rooms may be available to holiday makers, or occupiers during July and August. We do not accept responsibility for any loss or damage to your possessions in any circumstances.  E.g. the cleaners may not yet have cleaned your house prior to you depositing your possessions.  It can be difficult to distinguish whether articles still present have been discarded by the departing group or deposited by members of the new student group.  Occassionally where there is doubt we may leave such possessions in the house.  In this case new tenants and parents have no right to complain that such possessions are still present if left by former tenants. Upon clarification we will remove the items.   Should it transpire that remaining possessions removed belonged to an absent housemate yet to arrive and Leydon have removed the items following your complaint, then Leydon cannot reasonably be responsible for such removal.  We hope you will understand why in rare instances some unwanted possessions might remain upon your arrival.  Any items left in advance of arrival must be clearly labelled with the name of the tenant and the year of residency e.g. 2013-14.  You can help us in this respect by removing unwanted possessions when you finally depart!/p>

Because you are on a joint contract, the amount on the guarantor form (see Documents) is the same for everyone. The amount is calculated by taking the monthly rent and bills for the whole house and then dividing it by the number of tenants in the house.  

Any rent differential is a matter for the tenants to decide.  The house is let as a whole for a single rent.

If you are a non-EU student, your university may be willing to act as your guarantor. The universities will not act as guarantor for EU students. If you are able to pay your entire years rent in one instalment, you do not need a guarantor. We will also refund your admin fee!

The letting industry normally hold all parents equally responsible for all joint tenants. However, Leydon Lettings has evolved a fairer system. English law prohibits joint contracts with separate rents, but, if your guarantor guarantees an equal portion of rent to the other guarantors, they may guarantee only one tenant. This is also why the figure on the guarantor form is the rent divided equally between the all tenants.

£17 per person per week.

• Broadband Internet connection
• Incoming phone line
• TV license
• TV
• Gas
• Electricity
• Water
• Sewerage costs

Leydon Lettings pay a monthly cost for most utility bills every month, regardless of occupancy, for instance the phone line, broadband, TV license, fresh water and waste water. Whether one or six people are living in the house, the gas and electricity consumption is not likely to vary greatly - heating a house for one may be similar to the cost for six. However, we do not charge you for any bills, if you are not resident during July and August.

Yes, but only for the weeks in which any individual(s) are resident.

Because transferring bills is so time consuming and often problematic (particularly broadband and phone line), our bills package is now compulsory with no opt out.

When you buy a TV (perhaps for your room) you are normally asked for your home address. TV licensing will then check whether there is a license in your name. Because the license is in Leydon's name they will assume there is no license for the house. Simply refer to our link TV or contact us and we will provide you with your TV license number.

Telephone TV licensing with this number and they will make a note of it. You will also need to tell them that you are on a joint contract for the house which means that only one license is needed for the whole house no matter how many TVs.

Canterbury has a bi-weekly landfill waste and recycling collection. Please go to http://www.canterbury.gov.uk/rubbish.php and enter your post code to find out the date you waste and recycling is collected.

If you are in a six bedroom house, your landlord/agent is now permitted to request an additional wheelie bin on your behalf so please ask. The council will arrange for an unscheduled inspection to ensure that you are recycling correctly. Provided you are, they are likely to issue you with a bin.

You can purchase purple rubbish sacks from the council at £2.00 per roll of ten. If you fill these up and put them out on waste collection day, they will be taken away. Black bin bags will not be collected. Serco's address is Kingsmead Road, Canterbury, CT1 1SZ, contact number 01227 819400.

If you have a car there is waste and recycling centre at Vauxhall Road, Canterbury, CT1 1XL where you can dispose of waste and unwanted items. Please visit their website for opening times.

Recycling bags are provided by the council and delivered four times a year to your house. If you run out, you can purchase more from Serco or Tesco.

Please have a look at this council leaflet for details.

We normally ask you to leave them in the back of your bedroom door.

In the unlikely event you are required to pay a deposit:  We inspect the house after the last person has moved out. After inspections we will return deposits within fourteen days of the end date of your contract.

Because you are on a joint contract, you are all jointly responsible for cleaning the entire house. This means you really need to talk to your other housemates to work out the cleaning.

No. This simply means that if there are any approprioate cleaning charges or damages, we will forward you a bill for these.

Yes please. Do be aware that the freezer will de-frost when you do this so you need to make sure that you place towels around it to soak up the water. Please leave the doors a-jar to stop the fridge-freezers moulding.

At the end of the year we send round an email entitled "cleaning". Outlined here are the the things we look for. If you have not received this email or would like another copy please email info@leydonlettings.co.uk and we will forward it to you.  Also take a look at our cleaning page.

This depends upon when the new tenants plan to arrive. If we do agree for you to stay after the end of your contract, it is always on the condition that you leave your house perfectly clean and cleared so that it is ready for the new tenants to move into.

The contract term is normally from 1st July in any year to 28th June the following year. You are liable for the full rent for the entire period whether or not you are resident. However, should you find a substitute for yourself, then any rent paid by the substitute will mitigate your loss. Any period of your tenancy for which a substitute fails to pay rent, you will be required to pay.

Your contract makes all named tenants jointly and severally liable. This means that you are all responsible for all the rent of the house. If one person does not pay, we are legally entitled to look to the other named tenants. We normally pursue the tenant who has dropped out first, then their guarantor and then if if still unsucesful we could ask the other tenants. These occurrences are incredibly rare though. We do ask you to assist in encouraging your non-paying housemate to pay.

Finding someone is first and foremost your responsibility.  We are more than willing to pass on to you, any individuals who approach us for accommodation, but please do not rely on this. Good websites on which to find housemates are Easy Room-mate and Accommodation for Students. You can also advertise on Leydon Lettings' facebook page.  Putting advertisements up at the university is very productive. Do also ask your other housemates to help if they are willing.

Once you have found a substitute, please ask that person to contact us and we will organise everything from there.

Yes, the drop out fee is as currently stated in your contract.  This seldom covers the actual cost of additional viewings and actual administration involved.

Not normally. As students you are exempt from council tax provided you obtain a council tax exemption certificate from your university and post it to Canterbury City Council.

You need to ask your universities for these.

Canterbury City Council
Military Road
Canterbury
Kent CT1 1YW

You do not qualify if you are not in full time education. Therefore if you are part-time, you do not qualify. If you are full time for six months of the year, but not the other six months you are considered a part-time student.

If you have one or more professionals in your group, but the rest are students the whole house may becomes responsible for council tax. As joint tenants it is your responsibility to pay this and the council will contact you regarding payment. If there is only one professional in the house and the rest of the group are students the professional can apply for a discount of 25%. It is likely the city council will require the non-student to pay. If there is more than one professional, there is no discount. The responsibility for council tax falls entirely on the non-students.

Landlords are not permitted to instigate eviction proceedings against only one tenant where that tenant is on a joint tenancy. Therefore, if we are obliged to evict one person, we are legally obliged to evict everyone. However we can re-let the house to whomever we choose, including the original good tenants together with any subsequent replacement tenants. If a tenant we plan to evict leaves voluntarily then there is no court fee. If we have to get an order for possession from the court, this costs around £150.00, which cost would be passed onto the evicted tenant.

If we have to take court action against a tenant, you may be issued with a County Court Judgement. If this is for unpaid rent and/or bills we can then apply to bailiffs to seize possession to the value of unpaid rent and/or bills and court fees.

A County Court Judgement (CCJ) affects your credit rating so that you will be unlikely to be offered a loan or mortgage. Landlords also check for CCJ's and so this will have an impact on future house rentals. Employers are also able to check for CCJ's and so you may not be able to find employment in positions of trust.

In the absence of payment we will enforce the county court judgement by asking bailiffs to seize goods to the value of the debt and/or file for bankruptcy and/or apply for attachment of earnings order and/or if you own a property we can recover through the sale proceeds of your property.

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