Frequently Asked Questions
This page is intended to answer some of the most common questions we have been asked by letting agents. If your question has not been answered here, please get in touch at housing@london.ac.uk.
The University of London Housing Services Property Platform allows you to advertise your properties to our registered students. Students from our member institutions use our database to find a new home.
The platform will allow you to track how your adverts are performing and use an API to allow you to automatically send properties from your own systems to be advertised on our platform.
Prices for Letting Agents
On 20th July 2022 we will be making updates to the SPCE platform, to provide an updated and simplified platform, which we hope will improve the user experience.
For all registered and new users, there will be no charge for the first year post update up to July 2023. From July 2023, any new and existing property providers will pay a simple annual fee as detailed below.
Fees chargeable as of July 2023
Number of buildings Cost
1 £375
2 - 4 £500
We will check that all new agents are members of an approved client money protection and approved redress scheme.
In addition to this, we currently ask that any letting agents registered with us are a member of one of the following schemes:
- Propertymark (formerly ARLA - Association of Residential Letting Agents)
- Safeagent (formerly NALS - National Approved Letting Scheme)
- RICS (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors)
These schemes have been judged to have satisfactory complaints and redress procedures for our students, as well as robust written codes of practice, the requirement for members to hold professional indemnity insurance and demonstrate appropriate client money accounting procedures.
Letting Agents must also agree to abide by our Code of Good Practice. The Code can be accessed here.
We offer additional advertising opportunities on our website and in emails to students. There are also opportunities to sponsor some of our events, such as the Landlord Forum, Flatmate Finder Event and Housing Fair. Contact us for more information.
We collect photo ID and a copy of the student’s ID or an offer to study letter to verify their status as a student at one of our registered member institutions. You can find the full list of those here.
For university staff members, we collect photo ID and staff ID or a letter offering employment.
Please note, our ID checks are purely to check for student or staff status and do not include a full reference nor do they cover a landlord’s legal obligation to carry out ‘Right to Rent’ checks on tenants. You may wish to consider additional reference checks if you feel they are necessary.
The property platform is only available to students from our member institutions and University of London staff. For staff members, we still collect Photo ID and University staff ID to verify their identity.
