I had two as a student - two different houses that I stayed in for a year each.

The first was a huge Victorian house above a Tandoori restaurant. Large rooms, tall ceilings. The decoration was bare minimum, and the kitchen had no windows (if we shut the door and turned the lights off it was pitch black; we kept saying that we were going to have a schnitzel with Friztl night, but never did ). The landlord was a young lad whose father owned the property and the restaurant, and he was sound as a pound. He'd visit every now and then to see how we all were, if there were problems with appliances or general maintenance he'd have it done within a couple of days, and every time we ate in the restaurant we'd get free things. When we left, we tidied, washed the worst marks off the walls and out of the carpet, and he was happy. All five of us have kept in touch with him since, and we all ate at the restaurant up until we graduated.

The second house was a tiny, red brick, new thing on a cul de sac, and we rented from an estate agents. No contact at all from them during the year, and when we had problems (the guttering all around the house came crashing down under heavy snow) it took them weeks to get around to doing anything. When we moved in, the house was a tip and stank to high heaven. When we left, we cleaned everything ready for the inspection (you pay them a deposit, they hold it for the year, and on inspecting the house decide how much they're going to take from us to clean it). Two people from the estate agent popped in, went around the whole house, and after ten minutes of discussion outside, came back in and said they'd be charging each of us £40 to clean the oven. We were outraged, of course, and said that we'd do it there and then. They argued that they didn't have time for that, and then made the mistake of asking us what time our inspection appointment was... they'd arrived half an hour early. So we cleaned the oven, with them watching on, and when they were satisfied we all left the house, locked up and handed them our keys. Then they said they were going to have to charge each of us £20 to clean the skirting boards...

So - private landlord was fantastic. Estate agents were aresholes, looking only to get money from us. Middle of the two: my experience with renting has been Fair.