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How many students pay out of their own pockets for accommodation?

Halls of residence cost £3k-£4k per year. For that, they get the privilege of occupying the small, single room with washbasin and access to a communal kitchen for 25 weeks of the year. At other times they are required to vacate the premises to enable the university to re-let the property.

Paying rent elsewhere would be equally costly with no prospect of a return.

For the same outgoings, parents can secure a mortgage - it's unlikely the students can as they're unlikely to be earning enough or have sufficient credit ratings - and at least look forward to a return on their outgoings a few years down the line. The girls will take responsibility for looking after the flat and paying all the bills. They will have to find part-time work to do so. They will have their independence but neither wants to see herself as 'leaving home'.

Parent A was offered a partnership in the venture at the outset but claimed he couldn't do it. The other evening he offered to piggyback the deal and support it in full because then he'd be seeing something coming back a few years hence. Parent B rejected the offer. Parent A then told his estranged wife, with whom the daughter currently lives, that he was taking no more to do with it and that she and her daughter would have to finance it all themselves. The mother of girl A phoned the mother of girl B to say she was deeply saddened and embarrassed by her ex's attitude and behaviour and that girl A had been heartbroken by her father's stance. She insisted that the girls would share the flat as per parent B's proposals, so things seem to have calmed down a bit.

Parent B is concerned that he might be morally in the wrong to include insurance and factoring fees. He knows the financial plight of family A is close to desperate but the venture leaves his own family with next to no disposable income.