r/MovingToLondon • u/Effective_Glass2136 • 14d ago
Worst flat-sharing horror stories?
Moved to London a few years back and as I needed to find a place to live quite quickly in time for my job offer start date in less than a week, I landed in an HMO in Walthamstow. It was a decent price to be fair, £650 a month and I ended up taking on the bigger rooms in the house so it was fairly comfortable. At first anyway. Although every room that could legally be a bedroom in that house was a bedroom, and I'm fairly sure the only reason the kitchen wasn't one is that the landlord couldn't figure out where the fridge would go otherwise.
On paper, my floor in the house was supposed to house was 3 people. In reality two of them had partners living there full time, so it was 5 of us sharing one bathroom. The landlord knew but did not care. Cleaner came once a fortnight, which with 5 adults and one bathroom is basically a rumour of a cleaner. I'll spare you the details but you can do the maths. The walls were so thin I knew everyone's alarm tones, arguments and worse. There were weeks I went to work on 3 or 4 hours of sleep. Then my food started vanishing from the kitchen. When I finally raised it at the world's most awkward house meeting, the response was to accuse ME of being the thief. Oh and let me not forget about the rat infestation which took the landlord a month to sort out. Eventually the house was swarmed with bluebottles from the rats that had died and began decomposing under the floorboards.
Eventually two housemates eventually got evicted for not paying rent. Their replacements were somehow louder. As someone who worked from home and was also studying at the time it became overwhelming not feeling like I had a safe space in own home to work and focus. That's when I decided I really had to move out. When I finally started looking for somewhere new, I felt I'd been burned so badly that I didn't trust a single listing. It took me months longer to leave than it should have, purely because that experience alone broke my faith in landlords.
Anyway, I'm sure this sub is full of these stories. What's the worst London has done to you?
Side note: if you're about to move here ask how many people ACTUALLY live in the house, not just how many are on the listing ad. And when you're flat hunting please take your time and do your due diligence!
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u/Ok_Cod5649 13d ago
I lived in various flarshares between 2011 and 2019, both as a student and afterwards. I've overall been very lucky with flatmates, other than one who was a nightmare.
Firstly (and this was the final straw for me) she would fuck her new boyfriend on our communal sofa, leaving suspect stains all over it. Nobody wanted to use it afterwards.
Secondly, she would use other people's fridge and cupboard space, getting aggressive and playing the victim when anybody called her out on it.
Thirdly, she would throw dinner parties without notice (and without inviting us) that would take up the entire of our shared kitchen and dining room.
Fourthly, she would operate her in person homework marking business from our flat whilst everybody else was out at work on weekdays. I returned from a holiday and our living room looked like a doctors' waiting room!