Another Live Rent Free winner

August 19th, 2010

Live rent free in August winner

We’re happy to announce the winner of Live Rent Free in August, run in association with Speed Flatmating. This month’s winner is Sophie. Sophie wins a month’s free rent paid by SpareRoom.co.uk – her prize, based on the average rent for a room including bills in her postcode (LA1) is £346.66. Sophie has been a regular entrant of the competition, proving that persistence does pay in the end!

The prize is calculated using SpareRoom.co.uk’s Room Rental Index

Sophie says:
“Wow! I’ve entered this competition every month for the past year but never expected anything to come of it! Me and my fiance moved to Lancaster so I could go to the uni and we only had 3 weeks to find somewhere to live after Plan A fell through! SpareRoom was so brilliant and we found somewhere in no time! We now live in a house with a friend of ours and a cat, Oscar. We’ll all enjoy the bubbly I’m going to buy with this money (maybe not Oscar!) then I’ll be reasonably sensible with the rest! Thanks SpareRoom!!”

Don’t forget, for your chance to win a month’s rent enter now

Cheers

Matt

June Room Rental Index figures

July 8th, 2010

Our June Room Rental Index stats are now available as a free download from SpareRoom.co.uk.

The index is invaluable to landlords all across the UK as it lists the average price for a double room in all the UK post towns and postcodes we’ve had listings from, along with detail on how much prices have risen or fallen over the past quarter and how high demand is in each area.

All you need to do to receive this powerful information is to go to SpareRoom’s Rental Index page and register (which is completely free).

Cheers

Matt

1,500,000 registered users and counting

July 8th, 2010

Yesterday we passed a landmark – 1,500,000 registered users. We weren’t surprised that we got there but were taken aback by how quickly it’s happened having only passed the 1m mark in April 2009. Just goes to show that when finances are tight people look to sharing and taking in lodgers more than ever.

Thanks to all 1,502,063 of our users – new and old – for your support and custom over the past 6 years, we really do appreciate it.

Cheers

Matt

Another month’s rent given away

July 7th, 2010

Congratulations to Dominique, winner of our Live Rent Free in July competition. Dominique won with one of her 5 loyalty entries, gained by entering the competition every month – her prize of £485.33 is the average rent for a double room including bills in her postcode (N15).

Dominique says:
“Sweet lord you have no idea how large this smile on my face is. Clicking the ‘enter now’ link became habitual and I never expected to win…definitely couldn’t have come at a better time. I’m living in London in a converted warehouse with a bunch of young lovelies, trying to juggle all manner of things as I can’t imagine having my own place for a little while yet. Amazing, cheers Spareroom you’ve enabled me to breathe a little easier!”

Don’t forget, for your chance to win a month’s rent enter now (or, if like Dominique you’ve entered previously, keep on entering!)

Cheers

Matt

Thousands of pounds in rent given away so far

May 11th, 2010

Our Live Rent Free competition has come to the end of its first 12 months. So far we’ve given away a month’s rent to one lucky winner every single month plus one prize of a whole year’s rent to one extra lucky entrant. In total the prize money we’ve handed out comes to £11,166.57!!

Our latest winner is Margarida who won £658.66 – the average rent for a double room including bills in her postcode of N1 (calculated using SpareRoom.co.uk’s Room Rental Index). Margarida won with one of her free loyalty entries, extra chances to win we give to regular entrants.

Don’t forget to enter this month’s competition for your chance to Live Rent Free in June.

Matt

World’s biggest houseshare is forming in London

May 7th, 2010

Some of us live on our own, some have family to share with and some live with friends. Some, however, find themselves in a position where they can’t have a house to themselves and don’t have enough friends to share with so they have to seek new housemates – often people they wouldn’t have chosen to share with otherwise. Enter David Cameron, desperate to fill the House of Commons with enough new friends to be able to take charge.

OK, that’s a fairly glib intro but the point is this – for the UK to have a stable and secure government over the next four years the main political parties will have to learn to work together and decide on some house rules. If not, we could see a long period of squabbling over whose turn it is to buy the toilet roll with very little real governing being done.

As with any form of share the parties will have to carve out a balance between themselves and strange and unexpected alliances may start to form. Suddenly, the calm, quiet person in the middle of the argument who isn’t fighting either extreme becomes hugely important as a mediator and is in a position of power over the other two who want to secure their support. Step forward Nick Clegg. If the Lib Dems play their cards right they could secure the electoral reform they’ve been seeking for years, setting themselves up well for the next election. Last night may have been a disappointment for them but it may just prove to be the stepping stone to the 3 party race they want to see in future .

With many existing house shares that involve new housemates moving in there’s a danger of the biggest room going to whoever was there first – step forward (or step down) Gordon Brown. It’ll be interesting to see how the Prime Minister (he is still PM for now) approaches the situation and what he’s prepared to give away to the Lib Dems in order to try and hang onto power. If he’s forced to step down then the others (and the rest of us) could find themselves with a new housemate nobody chose to live with, let alone be governed by.

Whatever happens over the next days and weeks let’s hope the country emerges with a government ready to steer us out of financial difficulty and address the serious problems faced by the housing market in the UK. With a serious shortage of housing something needs to happen to help homeowners who want to rent out a room and clear up the confusion surrounding the HMO situation for landlords (although I think a house with 650 in it is an HMO in anyone’s book).

At least if they’re all sharing it’ll cut down on expenses.

Matt

UK homeowners chip in to help stranded travellers

April 20th, 2010

As UK airspace continues to face severe disruption due to the cloud of volcanic ash over the country, thousands of people are finding themselves stuck in the UK and facing expensive hotel bills with no help from their airline. We’ve been busy contacting people with rooms advertised on SpareRoom to encourage them to offer their rooms short term to travellers stranded  in the UK – within the first hour 400 people had added their rooms to the list – as I write the number has risen to over 700.

We’ve created a special page for stranded travellers at www.SpareRoom.co.uk/stranded

SpareRoom’s MD Rupert Hunt, stuck in Tokyo, is one of thousands affected by the shutdown of Euoropean airspace. He’s lucky enough to be able to cover a hotel bill for a short amount of time (with no assistance from the airline) but most aren’t so lucky. Hopefully by renting a room while they wait for flights a few hundred people here could save themselves money. Rupert was due to fly back to the UK on the 17th but has been told that the next available flight is on May 3rd and to count himself lucky as many will face far longer waits.

Matt

Multiletters issue 3

April 1st, 2010

Issue 3 of our free landlord newsletter Multiletters is now on its way to subscribers and is available to download free from SpareRoom.

The lead article is a strong response from the National Landlords Association to new government HMO legislation set to come into force on April 6th – more on this next week.

The newsletter is free to download plus you can get back issues and sign up to automatically receive new issues as soon as they come out at SpareRoom/multiletters

Great new book on lodgers

March 26th, 2010

We recently got hold of a copy of The Quick Guide to Taking in a Lodger by Tessa Shepperson of Lodger Landlord and LandlordLaw.

It’s a great introduction for anyone who’s thinking of taking in a lodger or even those who have but need a bit more guidance. It covers topics such as rental agreements, HMOs and dealing with problems in a clear and readable format that will get you up to speed with the minimum of hassle. If you’re thinking of renting out your spare room then it’s well worth the investment.

Obviously we’d also recommend The Essential Guide to Flatsharing as well (seeing as we wrote it) if you need a more general book on shared accommodation.

Someone has been busy (and that someone is us)

March 25th, 2010

We’ve just been updating the figures we’ve got on SpareRoom’s market share within the UK’s flatshare websites and the figures make for interesting reading. Based on Hitwise figures averaged out over the 4 month period November 2009-February 2010, SpareRoom has over 80% more visits than our nearest competitor and, if you take all our flatshare sites into account, over 60% of the specialist flatshare market.

We looked at figures for the following sites:

SpareRoom, Easy Roommate UK, intoLondon.com, FlatmateClick, Zoopla Flatshare, Roombuddies, moveflat, Flatshare.com, Housepals, Time Out Flatshare

Here’s how the results look:

SpareRoom market share