Welcome to your HMO
One of the first tasks I had to set about when I arrived in England was finding a place to live for the year. The other graduate students recommended that I put up a post on a Facebook group where students find each other. Once that was done, I immediately started getting advice and solicitations to be roommates with people. Between that and go to viewings, I got a very speedy introduction to lots of wonderful British vocabulary and typical housing setups.
I also took off an ad on spareroom.co.uk. This was a brilliant idea because the local housing market rents particularly fast. Every place I inquired about had already been rented — which was quite frustrating. Once my ad was up, however, lots of places that were looking for people were able to find me and let me know of their availability. One of the first unfamiliar terms that popped up was ‘HMO.’ I actually googled it because I was pretty sure that people weren’t asking me to rent a room in a ‘Health Maintenance Organization.’ In Sheffield, ‘HMO’ stands for ‘House in Multiple Occupation.’ Many of the houses are rented on a room by room basis and not as a whole property. This has some advantages — older houses can be rented out to university students for a cheaper rate they can afford, the landlord makes more money, and the students can share a kitchen area/living area. The other nice thing about this approach is that frequently the landlord will take care of utilities and include them in the rent figure for the students.
The daily commute is one of the most important factors of finding a place to live. In Wisconsin, I knew that I wanted a short commute because I would be studying at all hours. Here, I know that I’m not allowed in the office outside of 8am — 6pm. With special permission, I can extend that to 7am — 10pm. There is no way I’ll be walking home at 2am, though, so I can afford to have a bit longer of a walk. This is good because most of the locations I looked at were a 30–45 minute one way walk to work. The nice thing about Sheffield is that there is a count of the tree population — namely there are 3 trees per person in Sheffield. Every walk I considered had at least one park if not three on the walk. I love getting to see so much greenery!
Typical HMOs are 3 floors. The first floor contains the kitchen, a dining area, and a living room (which in many cases has been converted into another bedroom). The second floor contains one or two bathrooms, and one or two bedrooms. The third floor typically contains one or two attic bedrooms. Every single property had a clothes washing machine under the counter in the kitchen. Dish washers on the other hand were quite rare, as were tumble dryers. I learned early on that my clothes take a full two days to air dry indoors. A tumble dryer quickly became a priority in my accommodation hunt.
There was one letting agent who had a bubbly personality, talked a mile a minute, and used loads of British terminology. Within 45 minutes, she showed me 5 HMO houses. She gave me my introduction to the majority of things in the ‘Lou.’ Two standard things that surprised me were electric showers and heated towel racks. She made electric showers sound really straight forward — there’s a little box attached to the hand shower head and it heats the water using electricity as it goes into the shower. Some friends at church explained to me this last week that there is a catch. In the summer, the water is probably around 30 degrees C and thus bringing it up to 38 degrees C does not take a lot of work. But in the winter, the water is probably down closer to 20 degrees C. Thus it is important to use a slower flow rate in the shower in the winter to give the electricity time to get the water all the way up to the same 38 degrees C. The heated shower rack is cool because it works uses the water in the central heating to heat your towel while you shower. Interesting side benefit to your winter heating!
One thing I wish I had done, that I did not think of at the time, was to taste the water before I committed to a room. I moved in this weekend, and after getting everything put away, I sat down to drink a glass of water. Wow did it taste bad! I’m super glad I found a place with cheap rent though because I can totally afford to splurge and get a filter water pitcher. On the bright side, I have used the washer/tumble dryer several times already and the smell of my clothes is so much better I can’t stop smelling my sleeve! Big improvement. Also, my new daily walk is 35 minutes each direction and as a bonus, goes right past the school gym. I’m hoping that once I’ve got everything settled and set-up, I’ll be able to run on the treadmill every day on my way to work. I don’t think I realized how much I missed running these last seven years.
Oh! And before I conclude this blog entry, there are two more things I should mention. In old houses, there is a lot of fire danger. Additionally, British bathrooms are set up to avoid electrocution. The light switch for the bathroom is outside the bathroom. Also, there is a warning sign about Legionnaires disease outside the bathroom. Apparently the short version of the sign is don’t drink the water out of the bathroom sink. I also had a very interesting time cooking on the stove last night. There is a glass covering that goes over the stove. I sat there with my saucepan on top of it trying to light the stove for five minutes before I realized that you have to lift off the glass cover before the stove will light. I’m sure it is just an extra safety precaution but if there weren’t the remains of a caution sticker upside down on the glass, I never would have been able to figure out cooking dinner last night!