Melanie Butler counts the cost of underpaying host families

The Chinese agent was upset. Two teenage clients who wanted to share a room had been told to share a bed. Their host, “a lorry driver”, said this was “normal in England”.

The homestay in question was in Orpington, a town described by Wikipedia as “at the south-eastern edge of London’s urban sprawl.” The school, an hour away by train, refused to take responsibility.

Historically, homestay has been the main form of accommodation for language students abroad. However, with a housing crisis in major cities across the world, families with a room to rent are in a seller’s market.

An expatriate website quotes average room rental in Beijing at £50, yet a Beijing language school charges adult students £180 per week for homestay.

But in some cities, host families are not benefitting from the housing shortage. The average cost of a room in a shared house in London’s Zone 1 is £250 a week, while student residences start at £300. But a host family in the area can expect just £200, including half-board, or slightly more if the student room is en suite.

What is going on? To find the rates on offer for similar accommodation in other capital cities, I checked the websites of well-established language schools in five capital cities. The differences, set out in the box below, were staggering.

What explains the huge variations? In the US, agents may be taking large commissions on accommodation fees. But EU tax law makes that financially unviable. So why do homestays cost twice as much in Paris as in Dublin, Madrid and London?

In London, at least, the rates on offer have barely changed in 20 years. In 1999, a homestay family in Zone 1 could expect to earn £150 a week. The same seems to be true of Dublin, while in Madrid the costs of local homestays seem to have gone down slightly since my own daughter stayed in one 15 years ago.

The results are predictable: there appear to be no city-centre homestays on offer in either Dublin or Madrid. In London, the nearest I found were in Zone 2, an area not dissimilar to Brooklyn.

As a result, many students have been shifted to student residences, where they pay much higher fees and buy their own food. Others have to travel in and out from distant suburbs, like Orpington.

Neither is a solution for students aged under 16, the only growth segment in English language travel. Young learners need good host families, but good host families cost more.

For the £420 on offer in Paris, in London it would be possible to attract professional middle-class families living in professional middle-class areas just outside the centre. It is, after all a fair rate for a room, 16 meals a week and 48 hours of out-of-school childcare.

Fail to pay the market price and city homestays will disappear. It is already happening: half the schools I checked in Dublin no longer offered homestay accommodation.

Homestay accommodation

London: Zone1: £200 a week, Zone 2: £180

New York: Manhattan: £550, Brooklyn: £370 (Cost of living compared to London: +18 per cent)

Paris: £420 (Cost of Living: – 15 per cent)

Madrid: Suburbs: £180 (Cost of Living: – 38 per cent)

Dublin: Suburbs: £170 (Cost of living: – 8 per cent)

Prices based on half board, shared bathroom

Cost of living figures compared to London from www.expatistan.com