How can I find a room in London without viewing it first?

I teach at several Universities in London; your school should have an office that can advise you accordingly when it comes to securing a residence, especially so as it appears you're a foreign student (lucrative for UK Universities). Have about bounced this query off them? Even if they've only been able to provide flats that exceed your budget, limited resources is a problem they're well familiar with and I'm sure they could help you. You WILL NOT be the only student with money troubles, and sometimes they will operate an introduction service or direct you to University specific postings (typically web pages on their own site) where roommate ads are posted. Given that you're just starting a degree I'd exhaust every possible avenue before resorting to couchsurfing or some other, temporary and perhaps volatile living situation; school will be challenging enough!

Just noticed this "I don't know anybody in London who would be able to look at flats for me." If the University is a wash out for some reason, I might be able to help. What part of London are you looking in? I can visit and photograph a reasonable number of flats in E1 or The West End (Mayfair) for you. We'd have to work out schedules and locations, but as long as the number of flats is reasonable I'll help out as best I can. Maybe a few other London based MeFites would volunteer some time as well, then we'd have you covered. Mail me with details. Payback is a pint at a meetup.

I'm a fool, I missed the part where you said you don't know anyone. I wonder if you could pay someone to take pictures of the place for you.

I live within a stone's throw of Russell Square and could try to give you some intelligence about any options that you find in the area (and might be able to visit one or two as well). FWIW I tried to find a flat for myself while I was still in NYC and ended up instead staying at a hotel here and flat-hunting as soon as I arrived. Also, http://www.primelocation.com/ (which someone recommended to me) has listings for flats and flatshares (available once you click into the To Rent section), which you can sort by price. You would presumably want to search for the location WC1 (as you probably already know). I think that I first saw my current home on that site.

There are other sites that aren't Gumtree, like Moveflat.co.uk or Spareroom.co.uk, so have a look there too? Also, the problem might not be that you can't view the flat, it might be that the people living there now can't view you, so to speak...

STRONGLY seconding Mutant. Many of the buildings around Russell Square seem to be setup as communal student housing. Track down someone in your program who can direct you to someone who can assist you with housing. You will pay much less than if you try to go out on your own. Still, the search term you want is 'student residences' and there are many in the area. Heck, from my window (I live in the area too) I can almost http://www.unite-students.com/student-accommodation-london which specializes in student housing - not specifically recommending them, just pointing out that finding housing for students is itself a specialized market here and one you should look into. Further East will get cheaper, as Mutant points out. You don't want to go West - that gets more expensive. If you do want to stay in the Russell Square area, I live here too (sueinnyc lives close by) and can also help out with any further on-the-ground advice.

If you're looking at a uni in Bloomsbury area, just check out the Mornington Crescent, Camden, Chalk Farm, Finsbury Park areas. All are quite laid back so you might find people willing to deal with you over the internet and there are plenty of ex-council shared flats round there running between £90-£120/week which should be within your budget. Bear in mind that if you share with students too you don't have to pay council tax. All those areas are an easy walk/cycle ride onto the campus but other cheap studenty areas with decent nightlife you might want to look at are Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Mile End although it's a bit far out of the way. In my experience universities are pretty useless at finding affording lodgings for students - as overseas students pay so much in tuition fees, they expect them all to be loaded anyway and able to afford £140+/week. You seem smart enough to avoid the scams so Gumtree moveflat.co.uk and spareroom.co.uk are your friends. Definitely try flying out a week early to scope places out if you can.

One thing to keep in mind if you're coming from a place where first-of-the-month move-in dates are the norm is that in London, it's usually more flexible. As you've probably noticed from surfing Gumtree, move-in dates are completely random, and most places are available within a week if not right away. So although I understand it's not ideal, you should still consider staying in a hotel/hostel for the first week while you are here and doing your flat hunt that way. At least it means that once you find a place, you won't have to fork out tons of cash waiting for a move-in date that's a month away! As you've said, scammy ads abound, and I find there's a lot of tricky photography and/or wording to make a shit place look nice. That's why if I were you, I'd start the hunt in earnest once I landed here. Good luck!

Just in case you haven't seen them, the University of London (The umbrella organisation that encompasses many of London's colleges) has some pages with advice about accommodation. As an incoming foreign student you might be eligible for a room in student halls for a short time, but their websites keep lists of landlords and commercially run halls that the Uni deals with a lot. http://housing.london.ac.uk/cms/ http://www.lon.ac.uk/accom Alternatively, a few of my friends turned up without a flat sorted out and stayed in hostels for a week or two while looking at flats in person. The flat rental market in London is very rapid, so you'll have ample opportunities to visit a comprehensive cross-section of what's available in the space of a week. If you spend too long researching and mulling a given flat (where "too long" is more than a day or two), someone else will snap it up. You can find London's hostels on http://www.hostelworld.com and http://www.hostelbookers.com. I've booked through both of these websites with no problems, but it might be a few pounds/night cheaper to find details then book with the hostel directly. I've stayed overnight in http://www.generatorhostels.com/ and http://www.clinkhostel.com/. Both were clean, comfortable and had enough lockable storage space that you could turn up with a couple of weeks' clothes etc. and stay before moving into a flat and having the rest of your stuff shipped to you. (As a side note, Holloway Road/Seven Sisters Road is a nice area. A good high street with a couple of supermarkets and lots of local pubs and shops, cycle to Russell Square inside 30 minutes. It's just north of Camden, the goth/alternative centre of London, which has some great nights out available but can be a bit grimy to live in unless you find a nice quiet side street). Finally, make sure you look at http://www.tfl.gov.uk. It'll plan your public transport routes around London and even plan cycling routes that favour quiet roads and roads with dedicated cycle lanes. It'll be invaluable for deciding where is too far away to live.