Please refer to the Google maps provided on this website.  For the safety of our current tenants, we only provide exact locations of the house if you are proceeding with a viewing or reservation.

All our houses are about 20 mins of Coventry University by foot and 20 mins by bus to Warwick University.  The walk to the No. 11 bus-stop for Warwick students is less than 5 minutes.  Coventry railways station is about 12 minutes by foot, and the nearest shops are within 30 seconds’ walk.

None of the bedrooms we own have ever been broken into (and touch wood, long may it stay that way).

All bedrooms have locks on them and only you, ourselves or trusted agents we use have keys to your room.  It’s more likely that we end up locking  bedroom doors that we find unlocked (with tenant not around).  If we ever need to enter them to check on heating, do inspections or maintenance, we will give you advance notice.

We issue detailed guidance and reminders to our students, especially during holiday seasons (Christmas, New Year, Easter) to avoid being victims of crime.  It’s really simple:

• ALWAYS leave the front of the property clean (without rubbish or weeds on the ground), the bins neatly put away, without rubbish sticking out.  Potential burglars can use this to identify houses occupied solely by students, because the front of the property can look more unloved and unkept.  And student houses = ipods, ipads, laptops, equipment.
• never leave your bedroom door unlocked if you are going to be out of the house or bedroom, or visiting another housemate’s room for an extended period of time, unless you are renting the house with a group of people you know and trust.
• if you are going to be away, don’t leave all your valuables in full sight of passers-by.  Draw the curtains so no one can easily look into your room window, or the communal windows in the house to see what valuables they may be able to help themselves to.
• always check that you have locked the back door of the house before you leave, especially if you are the last/only one out of the house.

Burglars and thieves go for things that are within easy sight and reach.  They are more likely to enter a house through an unlocked entrance or exit door pretending to be someone living in the building, and taking something from an unlocked bedroom than breaking in.

If the house is on a fairly busy or neighbourly road (people walking by most of the time, neighbours look out for each other), it is harder for anyone to break in from the front without making noise or attracting attention to themselves.

Rest assured if you are renting our student accommodation and professional house-shares that we take measures to maximise the security in our properties through:

1. Location – all our houses are located in Earlsdon, an area with a low crime rate, where neighbours look out for each other.
2. Look and feel – all our houses are maintained to look like private residences.  We never put up lettings boards, or provide photos of the property facades on websites.  Entrance and exit doors are sturdy and we use high quality locks.
3. Guidance – we guide all our tenants on how they can lower the risk of break-ins into the properties, and remind them before festive seasons.
4. Inspections – we conduct regular inspections to ensure that security of our houses and bedrooms is not compromised.  During the Christmas/New Year season, we ask our tenants to let us know if they are going to be away.  We will also send people round to check on the house during those periods.
5. Insurance – we advise all our tenants to have their own contents insurance.  Our landlords insurance only covers the building and contents that belong to landlords, not tenants.
6. Being part of the Earlsdon community – you can join too as a resident.  One easy way to do this is to join Nextdoor  and get to know people in the neighbourhood.

Smoking is not permitted inside all of our houses for safety reasons as most rooms have wooden floors and are wired to sensitive smoke detectors.   You can smoke outside the house, such as in the patio or back gardens.

This is a safe, friendly community to live in and you’ll find plenty of local activities to get involved in too.   There is a mix of established families, young professionals and students living in this area.  Warwick University recommends this area as one of the two in Coventry for its students and staff.

You’ll find the streets clean and calm, with bank branches, good pubs, restaurants, shops and a Co-Op supermarket on the high street.

Certainly.  You will need to make sure that there are enough people in your group who will proceed before you make a reservation as your group will be charged the total rent.  E.g. For a 7 bed house, groups will normally find 7 people.  However if you are a group of 6 who doesn’t mind paying a higher rent each, you can still go ahead and rent the house.

In case of doubt, feel free to contact us on the phone, text or email.

You can do that in various ways – send an email to aboveboardlettings@gmail.com, use the Contact us form to start the process, or simply book on our website if you are pretty sure you’d like to go ahead.

We do most of our paperwork online.  Some of our tenants especially those living or based overseas aren’t able to view in advance of contracting or moving in.  Please refer to the photos and details on our website for the rooms available before you reserve a room.

Once you have decided which room you’d like, or if you’ve viewed it in person, paying a non-refundable admin and reservation fee will ensure that your room is held for you till the day rent and deposit payment is expected.  This fee ranges from £50 to £100 depending on whether it’s an early-bird rate, renewal or first contract.

We normally send you a 2-page reservation letter and tenancy application when you have decided to reserve a room.  This details key terms and amounts that will appear in your full contract – we want you to know this before you part with any money.

The admin and reservation fee goes towards drawing up your contract, inventory and lodging your deposit.  Once your fee and application form are received, we will draft up your full contract to review, before you pay your tenancy deposit and rent.

From the day you complete your application form, make the required payment and sign your contracting paperwork, generally you can move in within 24 hours.  If referencing is needed, we normally do that within a day.  No hanging around.  Except if you’re trying to book and move in at the weekends and need time to transfer your funds.

We don’t normally hand over keys before your full deposit and first month’s rent is paid.  And certainly not before we received signed contracting paperwork.   Sorry!

Sure.  The guarantor is primarily there to assure us that you will be able to pay the rent that is due on your contract.

If you don’t have a guarantor who fulfils the usual criteria required for an effective guarantee, you can still rent with us if you pay rent upfront, e.g. pay for first 5 months before you move in, and another 6 months of rent as a second, single payment.

We are required by the UK government to ensure that everyone we rent to has the right to stay in the UK.

Before we can rent to you therefore, we will need to see that you have a letter of enrolment if you’re a student, and that you’ve got or are in the process of getting the right visa to let you into the UK.  If you’re an intern or working professional, we need to see a letter from your UK employer and may need to speak to your employer’s HR representative to ascertain that the offer is genuine.

Other than that and a copy of your passport, as long as the room you are letting is affordable and you accept our terms, we will be very happy to rent to you.

Aside from a copy of your passport or driving licence, we will need to see an enrolment letter if you’re a student, or a letter of employment if you are starting employment.  If those are in order and you proceed with reserving a room, we will draft up a contract and a guarantor agreement for your guarantor to sign.

The guarantor agreement contains fairly standard terms you will find with most landlords and lettings agent, and these terms cannot be varied easily.  If you are unsure about your guarantor agreeing to these, we can provide you with a template to show them before you reserve your room.

If you are a working professional, we will also need to see proof of affordability (your bank statements, salary slips for 3 months).  We will conduct referencing with your employer and previous landlord.

We normally work on the basis of an 11 to 12 month contract.  During our peak periods (September to November), we would only accept shorter contracts in exceptional circumstances.

Yes, you can expect to get most of your deposit back within 14 days of your tenancy ending.

Deductions can be made if you have damaged your bedroom or communal rooms and equipment provided to you.

Like you, we would not enjoy getting into disputes deposit deductions at the end of the tenancy, so we always inform people early as soon as we see issues with the way they are using their bedroom and house, so they are given a chance to rectify it.  We also set out very clearly in your contract and Moving In induction the things that tenants may do that could result in deposit deductions.

For instance, if you smoke in your room, you can be expected to pay for a replacement of soft furnishings that have been affected by the smell of the smoke, and also to pay for washing down and repainting of your bedroom.

Yes, and this ranges from 1 to 2 months depending on whether you have a UK guarantor, and how much rent in advance you pay.  Tenants who pay for their rent in 6 or 12 month tranches will be asked for 1 month’s deposit.

Our room prices are based on location of the room, size and facilities.  A large ensuite therefore would cost more than a single bedroom.

Most of our bedrooms are only meant for single occupants, so the rates quoted on this website are for single occupancy only.

Prices quoted also assume you are paying termly in 2-4 tranches (i.e. 3-5 months’ rent each time), so the prices show on this website already include a ‘Prompt Payment Discount’.  If you can only pay monthly, add £20 to the monthly rent.

The rent quoted includes all utilities (gas, electricity, water) on a reasonable use basis, and unlimited superfast fibre optic broadband.

It assumes that you are fully exempt from council tax, as all full-time students will be.  You will need to provide your course enrolment letter and a student ID to qualify for exemption but we will help you apply for this.

If you are a working professional, you will be liable for council tax.   Council tax is charged per house and divided among those in the house who are not exempt (usually £120-130 per house).  If there are fewer than 3 professionals in the house, we can offer a subsidy to your council tax so your minimum contribution will be £40 to £60 per month (estimated).

In order to secure your room as quickly as possible, if you’re already in the UK, you can pay either by depositing cash into our bank account, or arranging a BACS transfer from  your UK bank account.  Otherwise, you can pay via Paypal or an international bank transfer.  Paypal and the banks will charge you fees for handling the transfer.  Paypal is instantaneous but a bank transfer can take anything from 5 to 7 working days.

We make it a point to introduce housemates to each other each time someone moves in.  Prior to you reserving your room, we would not be able to arrange a special meeting between you and all the tenants who may already be in the house.  We hope you’ll understand that we can’t expect any tenant to agree to give up a lot of their time to meet people who may not turn out to be their housemates.

We’d be happy to arrange your viewing at a time where you are more likely to meet some of them e.g. late afternoon but we would not be able to make any guarantees of a meeting.

What we can tell you about your house-sharers will depend on who’s booked or moved in at the time you ask.  For the security and data protection of our existing tenants, we can only share appropriate data that will not identify them individually, such as how many males/females there are, which University they are with.

We have had tenants from over 10 countries in the past years, including the UK.  There have been undergrads, mature students, postgrads and researchers for Coventry and Warwick University.  There’s been interns and young professionals from Peugeot, Jaguar Land Rover and local firms.  Most of them have been aged between 19 and 35 and we are proud to have welcomed tenants from a diverse background, regardless of gender, age, race, sexual orientation or other diversity criteria.

We normally get a good mix of UK and international tenants.  One or two of our houses tend to attract postgrads or young working professionals.  One of them attracts both undergrads and postgrads .  Have a look at the feedback that our tenants have left – you will see comments from British, EU and international students.  Many of our tenants actually appreciate the multi-cultural diversity and inclusiveness that we have in our houses.

We tend also to attract second-years and above, including post-grads.  Most of our tenants come to us because they prefer to live in calm environments where they can study or work well in.  They are therefore normally clear that they do not want to be in a household that has frequent parties, loud music and strangers coming in and out of the house.

We can’t guarantee households that will only consist only female or only male tenants.  That said, we tend to avoid scenarios of three males and one female in a four-bed house for instance because feedback from most female tenants indicate that that’s really unpopular.

You can have visitors and guests as long as you observe the rights of your fellow housemates and landlord.

As house-sharing etiquette goes, when you are renting a bedroom rather than the whole house, you need to be mindful and considerate of your housemates.  This means informing them or seeking permission in advance if you have visitors who are also going to be using the communal areas.

We know from years of house-sharing experience and being landlords of shared houses that most people would not be happy with inconsiderate housemates, but also understand that not everyone has the same level of house-sharing experience.  Generally, we find that people will not be happy with housemates who:

• Leave communal areas dirty (glasses/dishes/cooking equipment in sinks/dining tables) for at least a day, such that others don’t have clean surfaces to cook or eat on
• Pile up rubbish in communal areas instead of sorting and taking out it out
• Have guests beyond 10.30 p.m. at night, talking loudly in corridors or bedrooms without regard for others who are trying to sleep
• Monopolise communal areas like dining rooms themselves or with guests for prolonged periods in a way that makes other housemates feel uncomfortable to use that space at the same time

We generally let people get on and talk things out like adults when they house-share. If this doesn’t work, we do not mind stepping in to say something or take appropriate action, so everyone in the house has an enjoyable rental experience.

We provide full guides and manuals in each house on how things like rubbish collection, safety and equipment that we provide work.  You can always approach us if you are missing any information.  Chances are that you will be sharing the house with other housemates who have experience of renting in the UK too, so do not worry about this.

As many of our tenants may not be experienced about issues on maintenance, health and safety, we make it a point to send out helpful resources at various times of the year to guide all our tenants,e.g. how to avoid having black mould grow in your room.

As our tenants are adults, even though some are more experienced at house-sharing than others,  we find that most of them prefer to have a conversation with each other to iron out disagreements before involving us.  It is part of growing up to learn to get along and to have adult-adult conversations when we encounter differences.

On occasions where a tenant has persistently disregarded reasonable requests from other housemates or ourselves (your landlord) to be more considerate or stop monopolising the facilities, we will step in quickly to investigate the issue, determine a resolution for all parties and take appropriate action.  We take all our tenants’ legal rights to enjoyment of the property they have rented seriously.

Over the course of the last 8 years, out of 100 tenants we’ve had, we’ve had to let go of 3 tenants who continued to behave in anti-social ways.  As this can be upsetting for everyone in the house (and us too), we do our best to brief prospective tenants of expectations, so they will not find their lifestyles incompatible with our typical tenants.  See our blog for our top tips on house-sharing.

If you face any issues, you can always approach us. We take anti-social behaviour, overcrowding and safety issues seriously so you can be assured of a response within 24 hours usually and action within 1-2 working days.

If you don’t tell us of the issues you may be facing, it is impossible for us to find out.  We therefore rely on you informing us.  To help you do that more easily, we treat all reports in utmost confidence.  We know how tricky it can be to manage relationships with your housemates and landlord, and how our tenants need to feel safe.

All our houses are heated using a modern, efficient combination boilers and an intelligent heating system.  This means that the boiler and thermostat is always on, with the thermostat monitoring the temperature in the house every 30 minutes all day and night to ensure that the house is heated to the target temperature set on a heating schedule.   Whatever time of the day or night it is, if the temperature falls below target, the boiler will work to ‘top up’ the heating, thereby keeping the temperature to a fairly constant level – which in turn helps with energy efficiency.

We aim to make it such that it is never too cold or too hot for any tenant and can change the heating programme within a few minutes of having a text or conversation with you.  Your energy bills are included in your rent and you’ll be charged for excess at the end of your tenancy anyway, so we trust that you will use energy sensibly.

Generally, we operate heating around principles of compromise, common sense (assuming normal human sleep/waking schedules)  and energy saving.

Compromise:  When you rent a room in a house being shared with 3 other people, there will be 4 people potentially having different schedules and perceptions of what is too cold/hot.  We strive to ensure that there is a good compromise.  This means heating the house to tropical temperatures e.g. 25 degrees Celsius  during the day time will make it too hot and dry for most people.  We generally keep temperatures between 20 to 21 degrees during the day and adjust the heating before normal sleeping time (10.30 p.m.) so that it achieves 18.5 degrees during the night as research shows this to be the optimum temperature for health and sleep.  If you are renting in a group, we will refer to your lead tenant to confirm your group’s decisions on heating settings.

Common sense: If there are 4 people in the house renting separately, with different opinions of what’s too hot or too cold, the potential for disagreement and unhappiness among tenants will be high if control over heating is assigned to any single individual, or if everyone is made responsible for additional heating bills on account of one person’s action.  As the landlord pays the bill, the landlord takes overall responsibility for ensuring that there is sufficient compromise and that the bills are within a reasonable limit (this is stated in your contract).

If everyone in the house prefers to have control over their heating, this can be easily arranged.  Just agree with your housemates the person who is going to take financial responsibility and control of the utilities.  This person will need to apply to water, gas, electricity and broadband providers, and set up utilities accounts (water, gas, electricity) in their own name, pay for the bills and sort out cost-sharing with all the housemates.  This person will also need to agree to taking responsibility for operating the heating system.

Energy saving:  This is about helping to conserve global resources.  You have control over your room’s temperature through using the radiator valve (the large plastic/metal knob located on the left or right of your room radiator, with numbers on it).  If your room is too hot on a certain day, turn it down.  If it’s too cold, turn it up.  If it’s an issue with the heating schedule (e.g. you wake up at 6.30 a.m. and would like a warmer room), send us an email with your request.  As long as it’s a reasonable request that others are unlikely to object to, we will oblige.   If everyone opens their windows to let out the heat when the house is being constantly over-heated , this will be a clear waste of energy.

In summary… If the heating is not right for you, simply send us an email, text or call us so we know how you’d like it changed.  We will work with you to make sure the temperature is reasonable and about right for everyone in the house.  

Landlords’ insurance only ever covers the building and contents belonging to your landlord, never your belongings.

For this reason, we would advise our tenants to take out their own contents insurance.  There are a number of providers.  We haven’t ot any particular one to recommend but here’s one we found through a Google search (using search term ‘tenant contents insurance’:  https://homelet.co.uk/tenants)

We observe all UK regulations in respect of renting our properties.  This means observing your rights as a tenant, health and safety provisions, licensing requirements, and ensuring that we fit and maintain our houses to the required standards and more.

For instance, the fire alarm system installed at our house in Albany Road is of a higher grade than required by the regulations.   The loft in our house in Broomfield Road is converted to Regulations and has several levels of fire protection.  The boiler is serviced and inspected annually by British Gas, to ensure it is safe and compliant with UK’s laws.

We inspect our houses at least once a quarter, mainly to look out for water damage, early black mould growth that our tenants have missed, and to perform regular maintenance.  None of our accommodation has an issue with damp.  Once we spot any potential issue with mould growth, we take action quickly.  Most of the time, we find that mould growth is a result of tenants’ lifestyles e.g. leaving damp towels drying on bedroom radiators

We regularly inspect and maintain what we provide to tenants, particularly in the communal areas.  As we don’t live in the house or have CCTV monitors, we rely on your to let us know if you have an issues with any aspect of the house or equipment we’ve provided you.  Whether the toaster has broken down, or if you suddenly spot black mould growing in the house.

It will only cost you a phone call and some time.  We are always grateful to tenants who let us know what’s not working in our house.  We won’t ever penalise those who report issues to us by increasing their rent; you can be assured of that.

You can expect a response within 24 hours or less if you’ve sent a text or email to us to inform us of the issue.

Your contract comes to a natural end on the last day stated on it.  You do not have to do anything other than move out and return the room and house to the state it was when you moved in.

A few weeks before your contract comes to an end, you will be emailed a Moving Out letter giving you all the information you need to have a good experience even in the final days of your tenancy, including reminders of what to do to ensure you retain the maximum amount of your deposit.

Under UK contract and tenancy law, tenants have a right to stay in the property for the period stated in the contract, at the rent contracted.  Likewise, landlords have the right to be paid rent for the entire period stated in the contract.  It works both ways.

If you terminate your contract before the contract comes to an end, you will still be legally liable for the rent for the entire term.  This is the case even with the early termination is on compassionate grounds (e.g. mental health issues therefore need to move home, bereavement).

We can accept a substitute tenant if you find someone suitable to take over your contract.  Wecan also help you find a substitute if you are willing to pay a marketing and advertising fee (negotiated on a case-by-case basis).

We can’t guarantee this however, because if you are renting with other students and exiting when most students are well settled in their accommodation or during the off-peak season, it can be difficult to find a substitute.  We will always be upfront with our advice based on our experience, so you don’t end up paying unnecessary marketing fees.

If we do succeed in finding a replacement, you will only be responsible for rent up to the day that your substitute moves in.