Longest ever queue for exclusive student housesMichael Osborne from Perth, Australia stood on Walton Street at 8.45 in the morning looking slightly bemused. “What’s wrong with this country? You people are obsessed with queuing,” he said as he continued to queue politely. Along with 300 other students, he was waiting to sign the contract on accommodation in Jericho for next year. If you want to get a house in Jericho you need grit, determination, and a sleeping bag. Six very keen LMH students queued from 4.30pm on Tuesday afternoon to get the house they wanted on Kingston Road. It was the earliest anyone has started waiting according to Robin Swailes, manager of North Oxford Property Services (NOPS). NOPS do not let students view the houses before they release them when they open on Wednesday , so they are forced to dash around Jericho in the early morning and make a snap judgment. They have to be quick – by 10.30am all of the houses will be gone. The six prospective housemates, Johanna Thoma, Tim De Faramond, Philip Maughn, Rachel Greener, Richard Strauss and Jon Monk, took shifts waiting on the freezing Walton Street pavement before the estate agent opened at nine on Wednesday morning. “We’ve set a new precedent,” said De Faramond. Once one group set up camp, a snowball effect was created as others rushed to get a place in the queue fearing that the house they wanted would be snatched from them. NOPS have a near-monopoly on student houses in Jericho and by 8.30am on Wednesday morning prospective tenants were queuing round the corner having arrived throughout the night in the hope of getting one of the few available houses. Those at the front of the queue who were prepared to wait the longest emerged from the estate agents offices happy to have secured the house they want but many of those further back were disappointed. One group of three from St Anne’s quickly scanned the list of remaining houses before two of them sprinted off to look at their choices, leaving one person in the queue to seal the deal as soon as they got a call giving the thumbs up. Students living in the houses this year have to spend their morning giving tours. As one group leaves a house another will often be waiting outside the door, eager to have a look around. “These are the third people round and I want to go to the library. I did it last year myself. It’s a stupid way of doing things, it benefits people who know the people in the houses,” said Victoria Moss from Brasenose who lives on Cardigan Street. A lot of people in the queue agreed. “They delight in making students wait in the cold. They just do it for the publicity for their company,” said one student. “They came at 6.30 and drank coffee in front of us and laughed at us. They had their coffee in the window while people huddled outside in the cold,” added her friend. Swailes was keen to smooth over any tensions. “It’s successful for everybody. First come first served – that’s the fairest we can make it,” he said. On the morning he ran a slick public relations exercise, handing out vouchers for free sandwiches and coffee at Meltz. He even used to run a barbeque out on the pavement. By Wednesday evening a video of the students in the queue had been uploaded onto the North Oxford Property Services website. Despite the complaints, students are still prepared to endure a night in the cold to get a house in what Swailes describes as Oxford’s “most exclusive area”. They also pay up to £500 a year more than if they lived in Cowley. A room in a four-bedroom house in OX4 costs £4560 a year. A room in a threebedroom house in OX2 is £5040 for a year. Even Tim De Faramond, one of the first groups to get a house admitted, “We’re not that happy, they’ve robbed us.” There are a very limited number of student houses available in Jericho. Few suitable properties come onto the market and the terraced houses that characterise the area sell for anything between £400,000 and £1,000,000. “To have a couple of students in them is not that profitable. Most of our houses have been student houses for years,” said Swailes. Swailes wants to try and organise a deal with college bursars, especially at colleges in north Oxford like Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville, which forces nearly all of its students to live out in their second year. Jake Richards and Karim Kassam said that Somerville offered them no help in finding a house. “They said ‘Don’t worry about it,” said Kassam. “Then we ended up sleeping out all night,” added Richards.
by Ian Duncan
The Great Jericho House Hunt
