Renting: a string of would-be tenants leaves the accidental landlord in search of a suitable flat-sharer

The accidental landlord struggles to find a tenant to share a flat with three female students after a handful of viewing requests from unsuitable applicants...
 £462 a week:two-bedroom, two-bathroom flat at Tiffany Heights, a gated scheme in Standen Road, Southfields, SW18

You would think that to get into university a person would need at least a basic understanding of simple English, but it would seem that none of the students I have met lately believe it’s a necessity.

I have been advertising the room on the flat-sharing website Spareroom.co.uk, which has always come up trumps for me in the past. The site is free to use and usually generates lots of interest — but clearly, not one of the people who have replied so far has read the ad properly, or grasped what’s on offer.

My advert states that the room won’t be available until mid-August and, because there are three female students aged 20 to 22 living there, I have specified that prospective tenants must be aged 18 to 24 to increase the likelihood of them fitting in with the rest of the household.

So far I have had a handful of viewing requests, but most of them have been from unsuitable applicants. Three were from students who needed rooms immediately. Fortunately for us all, I checked their planned move-in dates before I bothered to show any of them round, otherwise I would have been seriously peed off at their time wasting.

Two didn’t notice that the rent didn’t include energy bills, even though I had made a point of putting this fact in bold type, and I had included an estimate of the gas and electricity costs in the advert. They couldn’t afford the bills on top of the rent, so those viewings were time down the drain. I’ve also had a couple of enquiries from middle-aged men. I think we all know what appeals to them about this room with three young female flatmates, and it isn’t the low Wandsworth council tax.

One applicant was a student in the right age range who needs a room from mid-August, but I’ve a feeling he would drive me and the other tenants round the bend. He bombarded me with texts one Saturday requesting a viewing as soon as possible and when I didn’t respond immediately, due to the fact that I was manoeuvring an overloaded trolley round Sainsbury’s, he started ringing and leaving increasingly frantic messages.

He said he had been looking for an affordable room for ages and was desperate to see my place. I agreed to show him round the flat the following afternoon, if only to stop him calling me, then shortly before midnight he texted to cancel.

Shortly after midnight he sent a follow-up text saying “something has come up”. Just after 1am he texted to apologise for texting so late. The next day he started hassling again, asking me to “reserve” the room for him until we could rearrange the viewing. Even if he hadn’t already given me the impression he was a total nutter, I would never have agreed to this.

Several prospective tenants have asked me to hold rooms for them in the past, insisting that they were sure they would put down a deposit as soon as they came for the viewings. One cancelled 30 minutes before he was due to look around, saying he had found somewhere else. Another didn’t turn up to the viewing and I never heard from him again. A third came to see the room, but didn’t take it after all. Plainly, all of them had several rooms on hold with other landlords. You can’t blame them for using this trick, but I’m not falling for it again.

So, my search for a (reasonably literate) tenant continues…