Need to find a house urgently

[phil06]

Things are not great at home right now however I have applied for 6 months for council homes and housing associations with no luck. I only work in retail so private let might leave me struggling to pay bills. Things are that bad I really need a house fairly quickly so should I go private/apply for maybe less popular areas? What can I do and anybody been in a similar situation to me how did you cope?

[Oosh]

I think I'd be looking for something small in an acceptable postcode.

I don't know what sort of size you need but there are usually things like that about.

Look in local papers too. When I first moved to Leeds I got a little bungalow which was pretty cheap.

[phil06]

Basically £400-450 is private let cost here + deposit.

My hours at work have just been cut back to 16 hours too.

I have been applying for council houses around £200-£250 but there are around 50-100 people bidding and if I go for a less popular area with bus rotes its maybe just 10 to 25 people bidding but I may not even get that.

[Pipkin]

Have you thought about a house share or renting a room in someone's house? It could be a temporary solution?

Pip

[lior]

There's Spare Room which has lead to a few house viewings from me. It's an easy sign up process and you make an advert saying what you're looking for, then you contact people with spare rooms. There's also flats/studios for rent available.

Also you could look into Guardianship. That's when people share buildings that are currently vacant. They're usually less than half price. The point is that you stop squatters from coming in and destroying the place. Camelot is one of them - there are lots of other Guardianship companies though, check out ones local to your area.

The most successful thing for me in the short term was to ask friends and put up a status on Facebook. I'm staying in my 4th spare room now - while my friends have been on holiday they let me stay in their rooms. Three friends of friends now have offered me to rent a room for a longer time, and one of them was in my price range. Going through friends is more hits than misses - there's more trust because if you're a friend of a friend you can't be that bad, but if you're meeting from a website then you could be anyone.

Good luck and let me know if any of that works for you!

[lior]

Any luck?