Wow, fantastic site. Lots of great info.

My girlfriend and I will be going over to the UK for a year or so to do some travel/work. We'd like to base ourselves in central London. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some good places to search (websites? estate agents?) for short term accommodation while we look for an apartment with a longer lease. Preferably an apartment style that is cheaper than hostel/hotel. With any luck, we'd only need to be in it for a week or 2.

We're looking pretty much anywhere within zone 1 or 2 for the short term.

Thanks for your help!

Wow, fantastic site. Lots of great info.

My girlfriend and I will be going over to the UK for a year or so to do some travel/work. We'd like to base ourselves in central London. I was wondering if anyone could recommend some good places to search (websites? estate agents?) for short term accommodation while we look for an apartment with a longer lease. Preferably an apartment style that is cheaper than hostel/hotel. With any luck, we'd only need to be in it for a week or 2.

We're looking pretty much anywhere within zone 1 or 2 for the short term.

Thanks for your help!

What sort of price range are you looking at?
These sites might be more useful for flat shares, rather than your own apartment, but you can take a look.
http://www.gumtree.com
http://www.studios92.com/

Thank you much!

For the short term I'll be looking for something <250 pounds per week.

After that.. well, we'll see what we can find.

I second the recommendation for gumtree - there's tons of great short term options there.

My company uses Globe Apartments www.globeapt.com for our rentals when contractors come over for a few weeks or months. They aren't particularly cheap because they cater to the corporate market, but they are probably worth a look. They have a lot of apartments in zone 1, typically around Oxford St.

My family of four managed to stay in a wonderful married student housing "flat" right in the middle of London (near the British Museum) for unbelievably cheap. We had a kitchen, common room, 2 bedrooms, bath room and then in building was a full laundry, larger common room complete with piano. This is a great option for short or longer stays.....and a number of London schools offer these kinds of options.

Schools... interesting, I never thought of that. Thanks!

I will do some checking at the local university to check out. Which one did you stay at?

It's called Goodenough College.
For enquiries and to book please call +44 (0)20 7769 4727 or email: www.reservations@goodenough.ac.uk

Be sure that they don't put you in the Goodenough Club...that's expensive. You want to stay in the student housing building and want one of the flats they have there. If you give them plenty of notice, you should have no difficulty. We did it for just 10 days but I have a friend who did it for months at a time and loved it as we did. Simple, spartan but comfortable, clean
and wonderfully convenient.
The College is supposed to be for visiting students or academics from other countries but if they have empty space, you will have no problem I expect. (Neither I nor my friend met the academic or student criteria.)

140 GBP/week for dorm beds, 280 GBP/week for double room

Generator Hostel is where I've stayed for the past 4 years when visiting London. I was just there 12/13-12/16. It's central london at Russell Square (walkable 20-25 min to Covent Garden, Leicester Square, Picadilly Circus).

Normal rates vary from 10-20 GBP for a dorm room.
30 GBP for single, 40 GBP for double room.

http://www.generatorhostels.com/london/

1) Make a normal reservation for your stay
2) 20 days before your stay, see if RatesToGo has 10 GBP rates...

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There are some hotels around Russell Square with 25-40 GBP rates.
I don't have personal experience with them...
When are you going to London?
I'll be back there Jan 19, and could ask around for you...

Thanks! I've never heard of ratestogo.com before, it looks like they have some pretty phenomenal prices. Have you used it much? Does anyone have any experience with it? I did a quick search and will look a bit more.

Thanks for your generous offer of asking around. I wouldn't want to put you thru any trouble, if you happen to come across something, then great, if not, no big deal. We don't actually take off until Jan 29th, so we have a bit of time.

Cheers!

One option you may want to think about is signing up at couchsurfing.com, and staying at a local's place for a few days or up to a ocuple of weeks, usually for FREE. It's an option while you get your bearings. And, you'd be with a local and their friends who could fill you in on things. Plenty of local, London "natives" with accomodations on offer.

I've only used RatesToGo once. The rates are great for London, but they haven't helped for any other cities so far. Perhaps it's an England-based site...and has better rates for England.

The place I stayed did not need a printout of the RatesToGo voucher, so I guess it depends on the hotel.

I've used ratestogo only once so far, last week in Lisbon. I loved my room and the location. You need to be using a computer with a working printer because after you pay the deposit for the room, you are supposed to print out a voucher to get the special rate. I didn't know that and the other place I was staying didn't have a printer so I had to hunt up an internet cafe with printer along the way to print out my voucher. Other than that nonsense, it worked fine, and I will use them again if their price is right.

Thanks for all the replies. I think I'll give the ratestogo site a try after spending my first night on points.

If anyone else has used ratestogo please speak now or forever hold your peace...err... I mean, it would be great to hear your experiences.

Cheers

If you're going to join RatesToGo, here's my affiliate link.
http://www.ratestogo.com/guest.asp?id=3553457
....I'd be happy to send you a drink voucher or some other airline/shopping card/discount in exchange.

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As a Rates To Go Member, you are rewarded for telling others about our service! Simply refer your friends to HotelClub using one of the two easy methods provided and you can earn Member Dollars for every booking they make with HotelClub:

First booking made by a person referred by you to Rates To Go through our "Refer a Friend" program 3 Member Dollars
For every subsequent Rates To Go booking made by a person referred by you, for a period of ONE year 1 Member Dollars
For every subsequent HotelClub booking made by a person referred by you, for a period of ONE year 2 Member Dollars