Yewtree Property - some of the best student houses in
Cheltenham
www.yewtree.com >> allan AT read.net << 01242 22 00
77 or 07715 661 604 (text is best)
25 Cheltenham houses (for 172 full-time students)
All our houses are full for the current
academic year (2010/11) – we will start to take bookings for next year from
early November
|
Address |
Location |
Map |
Photo |
Beds |
Spaces 1/8/2010 |
Rent/wk incl all bills |
|
Arle Gdns |
W of
Gloucester Rd; 15 mins FCH |
10 |
Full
(Patience) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
6 |
Full
(Ellis) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
Full (Capper) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
Full (Frays) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
Full
(Phillips) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
8 |
Full (Habershon) |
£full |
||
|
Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
Full
(Vaughan) |
£full |
||
|
Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
8 |
Full
(Cornell) |
£full |
||
|
Cleeveland St |
Opposite
Tesco (big); 5 mins FCH |
8 |
Full
(Clarke) |
£full |
||
|
Fairview
Rd |
Town
centre; 10 mins from FCH |
8 |
Full (Chima) |
£full |
||
|
Marsh Dr |
N of
Swindon Rd - 5 mins FCH |
5 |
Full (Whittome) |
£full |
||
|
Marsh Dr |
Ditto |
5 |
Full
(Parker) |
£full |
||
|
Mitre St |
Town
centre; near Wetherspoons |
5 |
Full
(Paine) |
£full |
||
|
Commercial
St |
Montpellier;
7 mins from Park |
5 |
Full
(Epps) |
£full |
||
|
# Alstone Lane |
W of
Gloucester Rd; 15 mins FCH |
7 |
Full
(Jarvis) |
£full |
||
|
* Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
8 |
Full
(Bell) |
£full |
||
|
* Alstone Lane |
Ditto |
8 |
Full
(Shaw) |
£full |
||
|
*Arle Gdns |
Ditto |
7 |
Full (Walker) |
£full |
||
|
* Elmfield Rd |
N of
Swindon Rd; 5 mins FCH |
map |
7 |
Full
(Hoare) |
£full |
|
|
* Elmfield Rd |
Ditto |
map |
6 |
Full
(Watts) |
£full |
|
|
* Marle Hill Pde |
Close to
FCH (350m) |
6 |
Full (Wootton) |
£full |
||
|
* Marle Hill Pde |
Close to
FCH (450m) |
7 |
Full
(Pitchfork) |
£full |
||
|
* Albert
St |
Very close
to FCH (100m) |
6 |
Full (Greenlialgh) |
£full |
||
|
*
Brunswick St |
Very close
to FCH (100m) |
6 |
Full (Greatrex) |
£full |
||
|
* Orchard
Ave |
W of
Gloucester Rd; 25 mins FCH |
6 |
Full
(Bennett) |
£full |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
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 larger houses), TV licence, telephone (incoming
calls only) and wired broadband internet connections in each bedroom (also, the
first 14 houses have wireless as well as wired internet). All our houses are
non-smoking. Rents are quoted on a per week basis, inclusive of bills (energy
costs up to £5pppw – excesses will be charged).
There are TV aerial sockets (with digital Freeview
signal) in all bedrooms in most houses. If you want a lot more detail, read
on....
More detail
Holding Fee/Deposit: £300 per
person - on signing this agreement and will be protected by
the Government-approved Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) within 14 days of
receiving cleared funds from ALL tenants. Check for yourself at:
www.mydeposits.co.uk/tenants/tenant-areyouprotected.htm
Firstly, this money is considered a holding fee,
reserving your room until the start date of the contract. If an individual wants to cancel prior to
that start date, they will just lose their deposit. Cancellation after that date will mean that
they still have to pay the rent until the end of the contract, unless they
either find an acceptable replacement, or the Tenant is able to negotiate a
cancellation fee with the Landlord. After the start date, that money is treated as a Deposit
which, less any deductions, will be returned within 10 days of the end of the
lease.
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 11 months from August 1st - June 30th
(ie you must vacate on the 30th). If any tenant wants 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. If you are staying on from the previous year, then you can stay during
July for free.
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 notify
Cheltenham Borough Council each year of the names and student numbers for each
tenant; 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
normally 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. Please note that the deadlocks on many doors
are there for the landlord's benefit - we do not necessarily 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 their PC on the train!
The
Contract: our
contract is basically the standard Assured Shorthold
Tenancy agreement under the Housing Act.
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 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 a digital Freeview
signal available where you can view over 30 TV & listen to over 20 radio
channels. The analogue TV signal has
already been switched off in Cheltenham, so you will need a digital TV.
Internet: WiFi
is available in the first 14 houses on the list – when you search for WiFi networks, it will be obvious which one is for your
house. The password is the last 5 digits
of your house phone number. If you do
not have WiFi facilities on your computer, do not
panic - all bedrooms in all houses are connected to the internet via a LAN to
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 can 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). We also have a secured wireless
network in each house – you will be notified of the password when
you move in. BBC
Speed Test provides a good test of broadband speed. It can be double-checks via BroadbandMAX.
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 small electrical items, such as: kettle, toaster, iron,
desk/bedside lamps, etc.
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
