urbanest City Student Accommodation — Hotel in London

I recently moved into Urbanest City for my undergraduate studies at King's College London. My initial expectations for this building was low since it was built to be student accommodation. The building was originally advertised as a postgraduate accommodation for King's College London students but later offered rooms for undergraduates and students from other universities. Although the place is still dominated by King's postgraduate student, there is still a significant amount of undergraduate students from King's and small groups of students from other London universities.

So far, it have been very fun living with such a mixture of people. I live in a 3 room flat with one kitchen and 2 bathrooms both of which are extremely modern (one of the only student accommodations with a dishwasher!) and well built. The common room upstairs looks exactly like it does in pictures and is easily the best common room in London. Apart from the incredible facilities offered at Urbanest City, what makes Urbanest City truly enjoyable to live in has to be the amazing staff.

During the day, Vasileia is incredibly helpful ensuring that repairs and maintenance is carried out swiftly and efficiently. She is able to remember the littlest of things and keep tabs on every room. I don't think I have ever been to a student accommodation as well run as this. Furthermore, the night time staff is practically the best in London. I am constantly comparing the quality of service between Urbanest City and other student accommodations (through friends) and I have personally found Urbanest City to consistently rank at the top. Herbet, Hassan and Faisal are always friendly and helpful. I genuinely love interacting and catching up with Herbert after a night or as I'm waiting for the lift. Additionally, a special shout out needs to go to Faisal who is the shining star of Urbanest. Everytime I have an issue, Foyzur get its done before I can blink my eyes. All the students here love him and can not get enough of him. He genuinely seems like he enjoys his job and takes excellent care of everyone living here. Overall, night time staff can be quite confrontational and aggressive but Foyzur, Herbet and Hassan really put that stereotype in the bin! Finally, I love the freebies offered at Urbanest so keep em coming :)

There are only a few issues with this place however:

The home cinema is yet to be fixed and it seems like there is no priority placed on this. I have notified reception plenty of time but it seems like there is always a new problem. 5 weeks into living here, I expect advertised facilities to be operational. Other Urbanest have a games room/gaming consoles. This has not been rolled out to Urbanest City The revolving doors at the front of the building rotate at inanely slow speeds, hence why no one uses them. The website had clearly advertised free-to-rent cycles and are still not available. Perhaps some form of compensation should be made. Common room lights and kitchen lights are motion activated. It can be quite annoying at night if we are unable to manually switch off the kitchen lights (the light bleeds into our rooms). Moreover, In order to move flat parties to the common room (reduce noise complaints) you NEED give us the ability to alter the lights in there.

Hopefully these issues will be resolved soon so I can keep praising this spot to next year's batch...

I stayed at this residence for a year and had many bad experiences with Urbanest and its staff. The staff often seemed very bored and indifferent to the students’ issues. If they tried to help they were quite incompetent and not very helpful. Most of them are not from the area and were unable to give any advice about local facilities. Whenever any problems between flatmates arose, staff mostly stayed passive.

Flat and room inspections took place often but were very poorly organised. Sometimes they were not announced or they didn’t come at the announced time or date. Twice, we got an email saying that hygiene standards were not met even though the person conducting the inspection said that we passed the inspection. In one instance, I went to ask what the hygiene issue was and they couldn’t tell me.

The whole building is very poorly designed and there were many issues with the facilities in the building. Most flats have no windows in the kitchen and no fume cupboard above the stove, so the kitchen gets very hot and smelly and cannot be effectively ventilated. The dishwasher is of very poor quality and barely works. The common room at the top of the building is often either too cold or too hot and the big screen cannot be used, even though Urbanest pictures the screen in all online ads for the rooms. The terrace on floor 12 is permanently closed due to safety concerns. There were also many issues with the (very expensive) laundry machines and Urbanest refused to take any responsibility for that as the machines are provided by a third-party operator.

Moreover, Urbanest likes to praise itself with promoting sustainability. At the same time, they make everyone throw all kitchen utensils and appliances away when they move out instead of leaving it for next year’s students who have to buy all the same things again. They didn’t even let me leave a single cardboard box for someone I knew who was moving in one week after my departure. I consider such a wasteful use of resources to be very irresponsible and by no means...

Urbanest City may be more expensive than your average accommodation, but the value for money is in fact exceptional. The views from the common room are fantastic, the views from the room can be amazing too if you get lucky. All facilities work well and are run efficiently, and the staff are helpful and friendly always.

Security is firm but relaxed, never a hassle to deal with any of the staff at Urbanest, they always make the place feel homely. In particular, Foyzur has been fantastic in making it feel homely and is always smiling and polite, as are most of the night staff who have the sometimes more tricky task of looking after us in the hours where some students may be a bit more vulnerable.

The only criticisms I have are with the building as a whole. The design can be a bit flawed sometimes, the majority of flats DO NOT have a dining space, so if you are looking for accommodation where you can socialise plenty in your flats this is not the one for you. This is however well compensated by a genuinely fantastic, large and spacious common room. Renting hoovers (vacuum cleaners) and ironing boards is a bit problematic as there is no storage in the flats, so you have to go downstairs and rent it and give it back, this is a bit of a hassle, however, reception recognises this and tries to make it as easy as possible.

Overall, I'd recommend anyone I know to try out Urbanest, especially if they love living in Central London but don't want to spend an...