I am interested to touch base with other HMO Landlords as I am a HMO Landlord of 7months now so rather new on the HMO front and i have already encountered several complexities as a member also of the NLA i am struggling to find a specific/best Forum for us HMO Landlords so if anyone knows of the best UK HMO Forum that would be amazing as i would like to be a full time Anorak wearing HMO boffin?
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Hi there Andrew. I am also new to the HMO Landlord sector and checking out Openrent in anticipation of being a new landlord soon (sooner rather than later I hope). Did you find some forum - or could this be one? Did you get your questions resolved? Myself and my biz partner have been doing lots of research and hope to be an anorak-wearing fully paid up member of the Landlord-Geeks club! So let me know how its going for you.
Thanks.
Deborah
You want to be at a Landlord at this point in time?
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Yes, we are preparing and getting our business togther. Will soon be searching for properties - so doing research now, hence checking out Openrent. Covid giving us the time we need - but hopefully restrictions will lift sooner rather than later (we hope).
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I am all good now thanks as i learnt fast & hard
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This is defo not what i was looking for for HMO stuff & i cant find anything online specific
Where are you located, where are you looking to buy, are you needing a mortgage and what exactly do you wish the properties to do for you?
Hi. We are starting a r2r business in the first instance aiming for central London boroughs. Does that sound completely mad? We think there will be a certain amount of divesting from London and HMO and from self-managing so hope to fill that gap.
Very interesting, I must say I thought that bandwagon left about two years ago already, I think most decent professional landlords wouldn’t be interested in it, have you evaluated the demand as I would be surprised if there is any demand whatsoever right now let alone at any other stage and when all of this virus has ended I would suspect due to extremely tight budgets that most landlords that are presently doing rent to rent won’t be any more either?
And yes it does sound a little crazy for sure yet I have not properly studied the market to ascertain the demand but I can tell you that about a year and a half ago I had nothing but harassment from people trying to do rent to rent so I would estimate the supply outweighs the demand, as of about a year ago I got almost 0 enquiries for rent to rent and I think that was mainly down to the policy rules and regulations changes that came into force which do not work in your favour?
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andrew8. this has gone over my head as I had not heard of r2r .
Its where self made so-called wanabe people pretend to be letting agents Then pretend to be a tenant of yours then the sub-let it out to anyone, its a real scam in my view yet a legal scam, similar to a Corporate Let yet 99.9% more dodgy
i Thought it might be a form of sublet . So no control over who they let your place to? I would never do that… too risky !
Interesting. Thanks for your feedback Andrew. I understand R2R has always had a really bad name and I know there are many unreliable operators, but that can be said of landlords et al. One of our R2R partners has been in the business for 10 years and he continues to pick up properties from landlords who come to him to manage them for a whole host of reasons. He is an absolutely excellent landlord and invests in every property he manages, respects his business, tenants and landlords and his business grows quite easily and in Central London. I have chosen and managed excellent tenants for the past 12 years (central London again) in a 4 bed property that is not my own and never had a void period because I am so thorough at choosing them. My colleague and I will be better at managing the tenants than many landlords and letting agents. Yes, it’s a trust thing - everything is of course - its not a difficult thing to come by (trust) if your looking for it, easy to miss if your not, sadly. There is a pretty significant difference between a letting agent and a property manager though isn’t there? R2R uses a commercial lease agreement and most of the letting agents I’ve spoken to have no clue what that is (not all of them of course). I know that a property will be in better hands with us than many landlords and letting agents (many of whom are just forms fillers and care not a bit about the property or whose in it other than getting the rent paid). There are many reasons why landlords don’t want to manage properties and why they would be willing to speak to us (if I owned a property I know who I’d go with).
Stay safe!
Hi Deborah, I failed to recognise the correlation between the analogy comparison which you seem to have used which is that a rent to rent scheme offered by someone in this instance yourself is a better setup than a landlord and that there are bad landlords around,I failed to recognise the correlation between the analogy comparison which you seem to have used which is that a rent to rent scheme offered by someone in this instance yourself is a better setup than a landlord and that there are bad landlords around.
There are of course a lot of bad landlords around that is without any doubt but it doesn’t mean they are bad as in intentionally bad as my findings just seem to be that they are incompetent, I understand this by definition makes them bad but there is a big difference as rent to rent people I have come across have done nothing but lie cheat and deceive me in an extremely uncouth misleading way and I have met a lot, Furthermore rent to rent operation is very much a borderline authentic as it fractures quite a few regulations and balances on the wall of probability and when rent to rent goes wrong the landlord is ultimately left sweeping up the pieces no matter what as the landlord is ultimately responsible regardless to what contract you may or may not have.
Obviously I am generalising as you seem very well spoken very keen and very professional so you may well be the only rent rent person I have ever known who actually is competent and authentic yet one has to give opinions and advice based upon experience and my experience is the same as any other landlord that has ever come across rent to rent which is to run fast and far away.
I think the main reason for this is that it is very easy to spend somebody else’s money and in a rent to rent situation I would suggest this is the best comparison.
The landlord cannot be compared with a rent to rent person as a landlord has put forth copious amounts of cash interest and responsibility in obtaining their property yet a rent to rent person has done nothing but made a claim that they can do something so the analogy is completely bottomed out this is not a comparable analogy in my opinion.
I am very sure you know exactly what you’re doing as you seem to sound like you do but you go on to mention property management in the same breath as rent to rent yet they are two totally different things & they are entirely different, rent to rent is a nice way of saying let me sublet your property for you and take away the pain yet if a true professional landlord wanted the service they would simply get it from a legally a binding ombudsman protected letting agent who can operate under scrutinisation of the regulations in force yet on a rent to rent it is anyone making any claim that they can do anything and then being issued lots of valuable assets to look after.
I even had people claiming to be prospective tenants and midway through the viewing upon my interrogation I started seeing holes and then the more that I probed the more I realised they were a rent to rent scammer, I also had them portraying themselves to be corporate lets yet when I dug down in the regulation book I could clearly see that they were not authentic and it doesn’t fall under the corporate let at all in an authentic manner.
Just to reiterate I do not think you are the same as any other rent to rent person I have ever met as I haven’t met you I am just talking freely of my experiences which I am very sure most landlords will have also experienced at some stage.
I am wondering Deborah, Do you own any property yourself which you rent out?
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Hi Andrew. I am sorry you have had such an awful experience and I can understand why. I am new to this and feel out of my depth against your views to be honest. I would just say that we are fully compliant and are legally bound and protected by an Ombudsman too. We are not all bad, just as not all landlords are and there are thousands of landlords out there who don’t want to manage their properties which makes them possible customers of ours and yours.
Have a choclately Easter!
Please do let me know how it goes as I’m really intrigued to know as I must say I would probably choose to use the service myself if I actually trusted it
Hi Andrew. That’s great to hear that you may look at it a little differently. Our interaction really made me think as well, about the service we are offering and I am sure that the majority of people who do it don’t really sell it correctly (or maybe I am naive). Maybe we can change that who knows. I was discussing our chat with my biz partner and we wondered if you felt so disposed to invite us to, we could either come and say hi (post-covid) and present to you - or we could send you our presentation - and you could do your best to find all the holes. We would certainly learn a lot! As I said, we are new, but this Covid is giving us lots of time to really put in the required learning and documentation in place, we would consider it a good opportunity to test our model. Best wishes. Deborah
thanks for the offer yet now of all times is defiantly not the time for any Landlord to require such a service in any event, you won’t have much demand for a long long time ahead if ever and what-ever demand there may be will be already snapped up by others as it went dead about 1yr ago already, the market was swamped by your competitors then suddenly just died almost like the mini disc as that went out quicker than it went in.
Why dont you become a property owner/landlord as there’s still opportunities available and demand?
OK thanks. I agree this will be a hugely difficult time, we will be losing a large number of the tenant population (20% of staff of a certain coffee chain gave in their notice just before lockdown and went home, mostly Spanish/Italian/Polish) and the massive impact on earnings, employment and wealth will cause havoc. But don’t you think it will also be true that once restrictions are lifted there will be many landlords wanting to make huge changes for a host of reasons (needing to liquidate their investments, wanting to liquidate due to change of priorities that CV-19 has prompted, retirement/early retirement causing them to consider managers rather than self-managing)? Whilst the uncertainty will be unlike anything we’ve ever seen (so who knows what will really happen - I have my doubts, for instance, about the market bouncing back quite as quickly as some are predicting - file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/coronavirus-and-the-uk-housing-market-v2.pdf) you are right that it will be an investors market. Sadly we don’t have the cash to become owner landlords (hence why we are entering as we are) but some of our potential investors do and maybe those of us who see opportunity will be the ones to catch the fish. D
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Hi Deborah, I understand where you’re coming from in your chain of thought and although you may have an argument I believe statistically the argument is flawed by hope, if your boat is sinking after the whole has been plugged there is still a lot of water to still bail out and further preparations and repairs to be made before the boat set sales yet again.
I believe quite strongly that your hope is dashed by realism with the enormity of the situation as for what goes up must come down and we have most definitely had the Up for quite a long time and the down hasn’t even begun yet mainly hampered by the added complexity of The virus.
I believe the landlords that will be staying put will be extremely frugal rather than flamboyant mainly due to the financial hole which needs filling and for those other landlords who are wishing to leave the game then I don’t see how that could benefit you as they would’ve left the game, however of course for those that leave those will enter also yet they will of had their own holes to fill elsewhere in their finance structure so I suspect they would be also frugal and tread lightly.
When money is tight and times are difficult people normally cut back on as much expenditure as possible and your services would be the kind of cutback I would imagine people would wish to make, Of course I understand that from your perspective you are offering to lessen the load of stress yet this does come at a cost as does all services and it is that cost which will be the initial and main calculation which landlords will be making and this cost would obviously be classed as an expense.of course I understand that from your perspective you are offering to lessen the load of stress yet this does come at a cost as does all services and it is that cost which will be the initial and main calculation which landlords will be making and this cost would obviously be classed as an expense.
yet there is another hurdle which may just be the most prevalent and paramount of all which is the rules and regulations changes of recent which emphasise the legal owners legal responsibilities and obligations, most companies like your own proposed usually have less of an interest in the capital assets they are in control of and as a result of this landlords will over increasingly find that by employing a company like your own May well intern remove The legal owner further away from the controls yet still rendering them legally liable.
I see it more similar to hiring an accountant, as it doesn’t matter what the accountant submits to HMRC as the accountant will not be held liable to the HMRC for instance upon them realising there is an error or a mistake on any counts, it is the ultimately that individual that will be held responsible even though they never filed the wrong returns.
I think we have been in a depression for many years in the UK I understand officially this is not the case however I most certainly have felt depressed over the past few years regarding finances and I think after this pandemic has finished if we are even left with the same currency and not already of gone bankrupt as a Country then we most certainly would be in a depression State where the tax will go up and the cost of everything will go up accordingly.
Take a look in history at the times tax has been raised as I have noticed it going up to a magnificent amount in the past during or just shortly after a time of crisis.
Obviously my view is very pessimistic or certainly may be perceived that way but I see it more as realistic and the fact that it may be perceived as otherwise could only be sold from someone who is remaining optimistic so it’s imperative to be neither when making your decisions on what and how to do whatever it is you decide to do.
Please do note that I have not obtained any statistics regarding supply and demand in your proposed occupation so I am not speaking from a scientific statistical stance here other than the statistics of what I’ve discussed referencing the historical statistics that I am using as a yardstick to estimate what The future may hold.
I have also just noticed that the UK digital currency was announced some years ago and it looks like now they’re trying to push it through the back door so I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK new digital currency comes out of this virus which may be a total collapse or give complete uncertainty to the UK economy for even longer, The UK owes a lot of money and has done for a long time and I really cannot see how the UK is going to dig themselves out of this hole without a full collapse of the economy as if they do try and dig we are just going to be in a very long depression for a very long time.