Yewtree Property - some of the best student houses in
Cheltenham
www.yewtree.com >> allan AT read.net << 01242 22 00
77
25 Cheltenham houses (for 172 full-time students)
|
Address |
Location |
Map |
Photo |
Beds |
Spaces 1/7/09 |
Rent/wk incl all bills |
|
17 Arle Gdns |
W of Gloucester Rd; 15 mins
FCH |
10 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
23 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
6 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
29 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
4 spaces |
£70/84 |
||
|
31 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
32 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
36 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
38 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
1 space |
£74 |
||
|
121 Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
8 |
2 spaces |
£78 |
||
|
3 Cleeveland St |
Opposite
Tesco (big); 5 mins FCH |
8 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
153
Fairview Rd |
Town
centre; 10 mins from FCH |
8 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
10 Marsh
Dr |
N of
Swindon Rd - 5 mins FCH |
5 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
23 Marsh
Dr |
Ditto |
5 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
20 Mitre
St |
Town
centre; near Wetherspoons |
5 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
24 Commercial St |
Montpellier; 7 mins
from Park |
5 |
1 space |
£80 |
||
|
#123 Alstone Lane |
W of
Gloucester Rd; 15 mins FCH |
7 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
*117 Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
8 |
3 spaces |
£74/78 |
||
|
*119 Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
photo |
8 |
FULL |
£ full |
|
|
*33 Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
2 spaces |
£72 |
||
|
*15 Elmfield Rd |
N of Swindon Rd; 5 mins
FCH |
map |
photo |
7 |
1 space |
£74 |
|
*24 Elmfield Rd |
Ditto |
map |
photo |
6 |
FULL |
£ full |
|
*7 Marle Hill Parade |
Close to
FCH (350m) |
6 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
*42 Marle Hill Parade |
Close to FCH (450m) |
photo |
7 |
1 space |
£78 |
|
|
*32 Albert St |
Very close to FCH (100m) |
6 |
1 space |
£73 |
||
|
*98 Brunswick St |
Very close
to FCH (100m) |
6 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
*126 Orchard Ave |
W of
Gloucester Rd; 25 mins FCH |
6 |
FULL |
£ full |
||
|
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All
houses are refurbished to a very high standard, have fully-equipped kitchens
(washing machine, microwave, pots, pans, crockery & cutlery), Virgin Media
cable TV (50” HD plasmas in most larger houses), TV
licence, telephone (incoming calls only) and wired broadband internet
connections in each bedroom. All our houses are non-smoking. Rents are quoted
on a per week basis, inclusive of bills (energy costs estimated on £5pppw –
excesses will be charged – savings will be credited). There are TV aerial sockets (with Freeview box) in all bedrooms in most houses. If you want a
lot more detail, read on....
More detail
Deposit: £250 per person - this will be
returned immediately after the end of the contract, subject to there being no
damage. We accept fair wear and tear and minor breakages - in fact we rarely
make deductions. Deposits taken after April 5th 2007 will be deposited with the
insurance-based scheme under the new Tenancy Deposit requirements of the
Housing Act.
Rent: Should be paid by Bank Standing
Order such that the rent is credited direct to our bank account on the first
day of the each month. The lease runs for 12 months from July 1st - June 30th
(inclusive), irrespective of whether you stay in the property over the summer
or not. If any tenants want to pay termly, this can
be arranged with post-dated cheques. We will present the cheques when we hear
that the Student Loan Company has generally credited student accounts. If your
loan is later than normal, it is your responsibility to monitor your account
and request us to delay presenting the cheque.
Parental
guarantees: a few of
our students get into financial difficulties towards the end of the lease; so
to safeguard our income we insist on all students having a parental guarantee
from a parent or guardian. It is a simple document that contains the following
words: "I guarantee to the Landlords the payment of the Rent and the
observation of the performance by the Tenant of the Tenancy Agreement. If the
Tenant defaults in payment of the Rent for 14 days, I will, at your request in
writing, pay the said Rent to you. If the Tenant defaults in their observation
and performance of the terms of the Tenancy Agreement then I will pay to you
all losses and expenses and costs to which you shall be entitled to receive to
the extent that you have not received them from the Tenant." Essentially,
this means that the guarantor will pay the rent if the student doesn't -
guarantors are not responsible for other tenants, nor any damage to the house or contents as we will already
hold sufficient deposit.
Council
Tax: all
full-time students at University are exempt from Council Tax. We require all
students to provide us with their registration certificates obtained when
registering at the beginning of each academic year. We send these forms to
Cheltenham Borough Council each year and they then zero-rate the house. If a
student leaves the University but stays in the house, that student will become
liable for the Council Tax for the entire house (usually with a 25% discount).
The Council will pursue the tenant direct at their home address. We require any
tenant ceasing to be a student to inform us immediately so that we can let the
Council know.
Insurance: we insure the property - we do not insure tenants' belongings: we understand that
the cheapest way to do this is for parents to extend their own household
insurance to cover portable possessions
of their child. Otherwise, a separate policy for the student living in a shared
house without individual locks on the doors is very expensive. Almost all
bedroom doors have privacy bolts on the inside. Please note that the deadlock on many doors are there for the landlord's benefit
- we do not normally provide keys to deadlocks. Unfortunately the absence of a
key makes it difficult for the student to take out a separate policy - that is
why we recommend the portable possessions route; they are also covered when
they leave the PC on the train then!
The
Contract: our
contract is basically the standard Assured Shorthold
Tenancy agreement under the Housing Act. We modify it slightly for use with
students, and to comply with the requirements of the University of
Gloucestershire - in particular, we have to ensure that there is a break
point should the student leave university, plus ensure that they are only
responsible for their own rents. If another leaves without paying, that is
our problem, not the remaining tenants.
Our
aim: is to
provide the best possible student accommodation in Cheltenham. We believe that
the University currently considers us one of the best landlords in town, but
you must check with them (officially, they do not make recommendations). Our
houses are registered with them and they conduct regular annual inspections.
Furthermore, they make a point of visiting all 1st years at our houses, once
they have settled in during the autumn term. If you wish to talk directly to an
Accommodation Officer, please see the University webpage
giving their telephone numbers. If there are any unresolved problems, you can
always contact them.
Safety: All our houses have electrically
connected smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors (where there is a gas
boiler), a fire extinguisher and fire blanket. All houses have electrical
safety test certificates (see www.yewtree.com/certs)
and where appropriate, gas safety certificates. All
of our properties have been completely renovated, including: boarding of all
floors with marine ply to contain smoke, changing all bedroom doors to fire
doors with intumescent strips where required by
government legislation. Candles are not allowed
to be brought into the house and smoking is not permitted.
Anyone burning a carpet will be buying a new one. Most of our houses are
licensed as HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) under the new Housing Act as a
result of being 3-storey houses with more than 5 tenants
Telephones: All houses have an incoming
telephone line - this will not allow normal outgoing calls, with the exception
of 999 & 0800 numbers.
TV: All houses have a television
connected to Virgin Media digital cable - we pay for the TV licence, which also
covers tenants' own TVs that they might use in their bedrooms - this is as a
result of having a joint tenancy agreement. Most of the larger houses have 50”
widescreen plasma HD TVs. All bedrooms have Freeview
boxes where you can view 30 TV & listen to 20 radio channels.
Internet: all bedrooms in all houses are
connected to the internet via Virgin Media broadband - help will be given to
set up a Windows LAN connection if you have problems with your PC (but it is
basically your problem if your PC doesn't want to play ball). Essentially, we
have installed a Local Area Network in each house, connecting each bedroom in
the house. In each bedroom there is an RJ45 socket though which you must connect
your PC via an RJ45 patch lead (circa £7 from PC World, B&Q, Maplin or Staples). If you haven't got an Ethernet card in
your desktop PC, you'll need to buy one (circa £10 from PC World - and that
includes the patch lead), or, for laptop PCs, a USB Ethernet adapter (about
£40). All wiring is CAT-5 star networked back to a Broadband Router. The router
also allows file swapping and gaming with others in the house. If you do not
want others to access your hard drive, do not enable that option. The router is
linked to the Virgin Media cable modem. Both router and modem should be
permanently left on. If they fail to allow access to the Internet anytime,
re-boot both by switching off/on at the plug (first of all though, switch off
all PCs - not hibernate - and remove the power lead - this will force the PCs
to forget their IP address on the LAN - otherwise you will get an IP conflict
when you re-boot as the DHCP table is reset and new IP addresses of the form
192.168.1.1xx are dynamically allocated by the router to each PC). Broadband is
'always on'; you simply click on Internet Explorer and you're away. The big
advantage of broadband is, of course, that you can all use the service
simultaneously. The potential bandwidth is shared equally between the active users
at any specific moment in time (ie those actually
downloading at that millisecond). Tenants must not install wireless networks - because we are one of the few
landlords that install broadband, neighbours try to piggyback wireless services
for free and slow down the service. Beelinebandwidthtest.com
provides a good test of download speed.
Equipment: all our houses are well equipped
with cooker(s), washing machine, microwave, refrigerator(s), freezer(s), vacuum
cleaner, crockery, cutlery, saucepans, ironing board, etc. For legal reasons,
we do not provide: kettle, toaster, iron, desk/bedside lamps.
Maintenance: any faults with equipment we
provide will be rectified at our expense (unless abused by tenants).
Useful
advice: the
Accommodation office provides a useful booklet
in Adobe PDF format. Also on the front page of the Uni website www.glos.ac.uk there is a link to Virtual TOURS
– if you click that link and select the Private Student Accommodation link you
will end up here. The house chosen is one of mine – we own
another 11 similar ones in the road and around the corner.
Landlords: Allan & Joan Read, Yew Tree House, Edge, Gloucestershire GL6
6NR
Cheltenham
01242 22 00 77 (home) or 07715 661 604 (mobile – TEXT is best) or
email allan AT read.net
