Houses In Multiple Occupation (HMO)

With the chronic housing shortage in the UK & demand for rental properties there has been a growth in the market for room rentals. HMO’s – houses in Multiple Occupation offer landlords the opportunity to look at the possibility of increasing their rental income and rental profits by offering accommodation on a sharers basis.

There are many different types of HMO’s and they can be classified by the tenant profile. The tenants can be categorised into 3 main areas:

• Students Professionals
• Local Housing
• Allowance tenants.

The professional market could then be split into young white collar professionals, normally graduates and then non-graduates who may be more likely to be trade orientated than office workers.

When you create an HMO ask yourself – who are my target tenants? Then you should look at your local area to determine the demographic and design your HMO around this market.

For example, top end professionals will usually want top end properties where things such as private bathrooms and Wi-Fi would be critical to this group. It is therefore good to put in as many en-suite shower rooms as possible and install the best broadband product available.

In these HMO’s televisions are not as highly regarded as the broadband speed & the need to be able to download large quantities of data fast. Another important factor is to make sure there are a good supply of local bars, coffee shops and local transport links.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we have the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) tenants. These tenants are on a tight budget and are therefore more motivated by price rather than the services on offer.

It could be the case therefore, that in LHA HMO’s you do not need to provide Internet and you don’t need to invest in creating en-suites, it just doesn’t make financial sense as they would struggle to pay the higher rent. If you are wanting to get started, the simplest HMO’s would be either a 4 bed Student HMO or 4/5 Bed professional HMO. A good way to start an HMO would be to buy a 3 bed house offering 3 large bedrooms & 2 reception rooms.

You then use either one or both of the reception rooms as the extra bedrooms in order to allow for 4 or 5 sharers in the house. These days you can also find up and running HMO’s for sale. 10 years ago you were unlikely to find many on the market. Another way to get higher returns would be to look at houses with the opportunity to get 6 or more bedrooms by converting a loft or adding on a single storey extension.

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