In 2020, nearly 49,500 students were looking for shared accommodation, according to figures from the specialist site LocService.fr.
Out of financial necessity, need for space or the desire to meet new people, students increasingly choose the roommate spirit from the start of the academic year.
While the students will soon be back on their way to college,
20 Minutes
asked them why they still liked living in a group so much.
“Meet new people” (73%), “reduce their budget” (53%) or “live in community” (31%). According to the survey conducted in 2020 by the specialized site LocService.fr, here are the three reasons that today push the French to live in shared accommodation. Figures supported two years earlier by the Harris Interactive institute in its study logically entitled
The French and the colocation
. And in this back-to-school period, the roommate has won the tassel again.
As proof, among the fans of the roommate 55% are students.
And their average age is 27 years [76% are under 30, 6% over 50].
27 years old is precisely the age at which Raphaëlle chose to get back to roommate.
The young woman wanted "to find a little silence" and "to make her own cozy nest".
But after having tested life alone for three years in an 18 m2 apartment in Paris, the one who has just landed her first CDI has found her former roommates in the 11th arrondissement because she "missed life in community".
Like Raphaëlle, most of the students who answered the
20 Minutes
call for evidence
explain their love at first sight for the roommate by this need "not to live alone" and "to meet people".
“The roommate was above all an opportunity for me to meet people in a city where I didn't know anyone.
And it's much nicer to come home and have people with whom to eat, chat, laugh, do activities, explains Oriane, who has built relationships with "great people who have become real friends".
The young woman and one of her friends, also single, have since left the group to form another roommate.
“We prefer to live with friends rather than living alone.
And we have a much bigger apartment than the one we could afford by being alone, ”says Oriane.
Seven different roommates in two years
Same story on Gabriel's side. “Quite a homebody”, the Parisian landed in Nantes to do his thesis and wanted to “live alone”. The young man quickly faces a complicated rental market and decides to live together. “I realize that sharing moments together after work or on weekends feels good. Especially when you have a small drop in morale, ”says Gabriel, who intends to stay in this accommodation until the end of his contract. “The roommate allowed me to meet lots of people from different cultures [Iranian, Indian, Madagascan, etc.], adds the student, who in two years has lived with seven different roommates. Everyone has their own rhythm of life but we share outings and we meet in front of the TV or a good meal. "
Emilien is of the same opinion.
For this engineering school student who left to live 860 km from his parents, the roommate with young people from the same course "was above all a way to ensure to be well integrated and not to find himself isolated".
Transformed essay.
“As a roommate, there is always activity around you.
We meet everyone's friends, it widens the circle of friends, adds Guillaume.
You just have to adapt to community life, force yourself to take care of household chores and know how to deal with each person's temperament.
If all this is respected, life with a roommate becomes much more pleasant than living alone in the studio.
"
The tense roommate market in Paris
Before “having passed to” the “higher level of comfort by opting for the roommate”, Guillaume lived for five years in a 20 m2. Today, the student benefits from "a larger space with a real kitchen, a real oven". “The apartment is a bit out of the way but very close to my workplace. It is accommodation for three people, with three bathrooms. So no traffic jams in the morning to take a shower, the dream! », Rejoices his side Gabriel, the adopted Nantes.
Nantes is also one of the cities where, according to LocService.fr, the roommate market is the most tense, with 4.6 requests per room. Unsurprisingly, Paris is at the top of the ranking with 8.2 requests for a free room. Lyon is in second place (5.4 requests per room), Angers is in third (five requests per room). Bordeaux brings up the rear, with 4.9 requests per free room.
The fashion of the roommate therefore does not run out, boosted by financial necessity or the taste of others.
Also because finding accommodation when you are a student is often like
Koh-Lanta
, bigger than the pole test.
“Frankly, we have never received as many candidates as this year,” admits Alex.
The Bordeaux resident has been living with a roommate for more than three years now.
“It had to be temporary and then in the end I never found this apartment as big, beautiful and good as this apartment,” explains the student.
There are three of us and we each have our own room.
We have a large living room and a balcony.
Alone, I could never afford such a surface.
And now my roommates are my family.
We have Christmas together.
"
Co-tenancy thus confirms its status as the most economical way to find accommodation.
Alex pays 475 euros in rent for his 12 m2 room in an apartment that makes more than 80 on the right bank of the Garonne.
On the sample of offers analyzed by LocService.fr, the average rent for a shared room in 2020 amounted to 427 euros including charges at the national level, up 1.42% compared to the same study carried out in 2019. Joint tenancy thus confirms its status as the most economical means of accommodation: for a studio for conventional rental, it costs on average € 515, or 21% more expensive.
LocService.fr however notes strong disparities: in the provinces, the average rent for shared accommodation is 383 euros compared to 529 euros in Ile-de-France, and 710 euros in Paris.
Our file on student life
Figures that our contributor, Anne, denies: “We have a shared apartment in Aix-en-Provence.
25 m2 and 650 euros rent!
But be careful, we have a balcony.
"" The roommate is still cheaper and more fun.
When you arrive in a new city, it allows you to socialize quickly ”, notes, for his part, our reader Edouard.
In 2020, nearly 49,500 students were looking for shared accommodation.
And no longer such affinities: “A few months ago, I moved in with the sweetest and most strange creature that I had ever met.
Between blues and rants, we support each other!
Always with a small glass of Pouilly-Fuissé, testifies Valentine.
I will never leave her, because her daddy has free coupons at the relay point at the station.
"
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