Viewing Student Accommodation in Durban: A Checklist

Most people decide about a place within the first minute of walking in, and then spend the next nineteen looking for reasons to confirm it. That is a poor way to choose somewhere you will live for a year. Take this list with you, work through it properly, and decide afterwards.

Before you go

Work out the actual commute to your campus at the time you would really travel, not at midday when the roads are empty. Check what transport runs, how often, and what it costs you each month.
Walk the route from the transport stop to the front door if you can, and think about doing it after an evening lecture.
If you are funded, ask up front whether the property is accredited for your funding arrangement. Sorting that out afterwards is painful.
Go with someone. A second person notices what you do not, and it is safer.

Water and plumbing

Open the taps. Both of them, in the bathroom and the kitchen. Check the pressure and how long the hot water takes to arrive.
Flush the toilet and watch it refill.
Look under the basin and behind the toilet for damp patches, stains or a bucket someone has left there.
Check the shower drains rather than pooling.
Ask how hot water is supplied and paid for — whether there is a geyser for your unit or a shared one.

Electricity

Count the plug points in the room. A laptop, a phone, a lamp and a kettle is four, and one double socket is not enough for a student room.
Test the light switches. All of them.
Ask whether electricity is prepaid, how you buy it, and whether it is per room or shared. Shared prepaid arrangements are where most housemate arguments start.
Ask what happens during load-shedding — whether there is any backup, and whether the gate, the lights in the passage and the water pump are on it.
Look at the distribution board if you can see it. You are not doing an inspection; you are checking it does not look burnt or improvised.

Security

This deserves more of your twenty minutes than the size of the cupboard does.

How the front gate works, who has access, and whether it functions when the power is out.
Whether your own door has a proper lock, and who else holds a key to your room.
Whether the windows have burglar bars, and whether the ones in your escape route can be opened from inside in a fire.
Lighting in the passages, the parking and the walk from the gate.
Whether there is anyone on site, and how you reach them at night.

Damp, mould and the coastal problem

Durban is humid, and damp is the most common complaint in coastal housing. Look in the corners of the ceiling, behind the door, inside the built-in cupboard and along the skirting behind where a bed would go. Black spotted mould in a corner or a musty smell in a cupboard tells you the room does not dry out. Ask whether the room has cross ventilation — a window that opens on more than one side of the space makes an enormous difference here.

The practical stuff people forget

Cell signal inside the room, not in the doorway. Check it with your own phone.
Internet — whether it is included, whose it is, and whether it works in your room or only near the router.
Where you would actually study. Is there a desk, or space for one, and a plug near it?
Storage. A year of clothes, books and a suitcase have to go somewhere.
Noise. Stand still for thirty seconds and listen. Traffic, a nightclub, a busy passage.
Kitchen and laundry — what is shared, what is yours, and where washing dries in the rainy season.

Questions worth asking out loud

What is included in the rent and what is billed separately. How faults are reported and to whom. Whether the lease runs for a full year or the academic year. What the deposit is and how it is handled. Whether there are house rules about visitors and noise. Who else lives in the property. Ask all of it before you say you like the place — the answers are more honest that way.

And take photographs

Photograph everything while you are there, including the things you did not love. When you are comparing three places a week later you will not remember which one had the good water pressure. If you do take the place, those photographs are also the beginning of your incoming inspection record.