How to buy an HMO

More than any other type of property investment, the success of an HMO hinges on buying and setting it up right in the first place. We’ve talked recently about managing an HMO once it’s up and running, but this week it’s all about acquisition.

We discuss:

• Where to buy, depending on your target market
• Two ways to find out where the “HMO areas” are
• Why you absolutely don’t want to compromise on location
• The importance of understanding Article 4
• The challenges involved in financing an HMO
• How lenders value HMOs (check out this episode of the Property Geek podcast for more on this)
• What you need to know about licensing
• The returns you can expect to earn
• The key components to setting yourself up for a high ROI

Resource of the week

MySMS allows you to receive and reply to text messages on your laptop or tablet, as well as your phone. It makes it a lot easier to type long replies, and also means you’re less likely to miss a text if you’ve left your phone on silent or it’s in another room.

News this week

Property wealth has quadrupled since 1995, driving a huge expansion in UK national wealth. That’s according to data from the ONS as reported in the Guardian.

As we discussed on the podcast last week, that’s only going to be magnified by a new round of interest rate cuts and QE – making the economy look superficially strong, but ever more of the “wealth” being concentrated in property and stock prices.