The Greater Manchester HMO Experts
Let Me Manchester are the HMO experts for Greater Manchester. Managing HMOs these days is not simple with licensing and more regulations than you can shake a stick at! Self managing HMOs or using a Letting Agent that is not highly experienced with HMOs can be a very expensive mistake. Click here to jump to an example of what can go wrong.
Let Me Manchester offers the full range of property services to the HMO industry in Greater Manchester. We don’t claim to have full UK Property Investing coverage, we are specialists in the Greater Manchester market, that is where we have our office and call home.
There are many steps in the property investing process, we can help you with:
HMO Investment Services
If you are looking to build your HMO portfolio, we can provide a service to suit your needs. If you want a hands-off managed turnkey solution where we source, refurb, prepare for rental and then manage the letting of your new asset, we can do that for you. If you just need one or more of those elements and you can manage the rest yourself, that is fine too.
HMO Portfolio Builder
Our HMO Portfolio Builder is our comprehensive ‘done for you’ HMO property investing solution. This is ideal for overseas investors, remote investors or time poor investors. As part of our Portfolio Builder service we will sit down with you (physically or virtually) to understand your requirements. Once we fully understand what you are trying to achieve and your available resources, we will work with you to build a property investing strategy that will fulfil your objectives. Once the strategy has been agreed, we will pass this to our Property Sourcing team to identify appropriate properties.
We will send you information about the properties including photos, videos (where possible), opportunities to add value and maximise your investment returns. We will oversee the purchase of the investment from negotiation through to completion. We have legal and financial experts that we can make available to you as needed.
As part of the sourcing process we will provide you with quotes for any conversion or value adding work required to maximise your potential income. Once the purchase of the property is completed we will oversee any property maintenance or building work that is required, to ensure that the work is completed as efficiently as possible.
Once the refurb is done, as experienced property investors will know, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the HMO ready for tenants. Don’t worry, we can take care of it all, from post refurb cleans, licensing, certificates, furniture, staging, we will even make sure there is cutlery in the draws and tea towels ready to go!
Once the property is signed off as ‘Ready to Rent’ it will be passed to our Lettings Director and her team. They will then get your HMO property tenanted and manage the property and compliance of the property for you.
We are able to support the full property investing lifecycle, so when the time is right for you to exit the investment, our Estate Agency team can manage the sale for you as well. We will help you to maximise the value in your property and crystallise the profit.
See below for more details regarding the services included in our HMO portfolio builder service or get in touch to find out more.
HMO Property Sourcing
In Property Investing you make your money when you buy a property, not when you sell. However, price isn’t the only factor in buying a property, especially a HMO. If you are going to rent the property for cashflow, it is important that you buy in an area of high rental demand. However, you need to understand the tenant type: students; young professionals; blue collar; social housing; LHA; etc and make sure you design the property to suit that market. If you are buying HMOs, is the area Article 4? How can you maximise the rental potential of the property in that area? These are all questions we can answer for you. We only source HMO properties in Greater Manchester. Our sourcing team works closely with our lettings team to make sure we only pass the best available opportunities to our Property Investor clients and avoid the lemons!
As we only cover Greater Manchester, we have a wide network in that market, ensuring that we can source the best opportunities for our clients. Just some of the ways we source properties for our clients:
- Our Network
- Via Our Estate Agency
- From Our Existing Landlords
- Direct To Vendor Marketing
- Off Market Opportunities
- On Market - Value Adding
- Below Market Value
If you are looking to build your property portfolio, get in touch to find out more.
HMO Viewing & Deal Analysis
When you are viewing a property you need to know a lot to be sure that this is the right property for you. Just some of the questions you need to answer are:
- Is the property in the right area for a HMO?
- Is the area Article 4?
- How could you maximise your profit from this investment?
- Will you need planning permission for a change of Use Class?
- Is the property layout right for your needs?
- What will it cost to get the property 'Ready for Rental'?
- What is your likely income from the property?
- How rentable is the property?
- What will your operating costs be?
- Does the investment provide a sufficient return?
- Is the price right?
- How to position your offer?
If you can’t answer any of the above, it is OK, we can help. We can accompany you to the viewings and work with you to analyse the deal. Get in touch to find out more about this service.
HMO Acquisition Support
You have found a HMO property, either through us or another source. The deal stacks up and is a great opportunity that you don’t want to loose. However, due to your location, available time, experience or any other factor, you may not be in a position to ensure that the deal gets over the line and completes. In an ideal world, you may think that this part of the process is handed off to the professionals and shouldn’t require much effort from you. Unfortunately, property purchases are rarely that simple and need constant monitoring and pushing. Don’t worry, our Acquisition Support service can do the chasing for you and only escalate to you when absolutely essential. Let us take the stress out of your next investment purchase. Get in touch to find out more.
HMO Conversions & Refurbishments
The layout of a property can really impact the budget for converting it into a HMO. A key part of the viewing process is to ensure that the layout that works on paper works in the real world. You need to get an idea of costs for either the refurb or conversions. You need to make sure you understand what is included in the sale and what is not. If you are buying an established HMO, does it come with all of the furniture, appliances and other equipment? If you are not sure what to look for or are an overseas / remote landlord, we can either attend the viewing with you or for you.
We have seen them all, the unmortgageable property that is falling down, the smelly property and the death trap property. The things that they all have in common is that they can be excellent property buying opportunities, if you have a great team that has seen it all before.
To make this service possible, we have our own Property Maintenance business, Panda Property Maintenance. This is a key element in us being able to provide a ‘done for you’ HMO property investing service. However, this service isn’t just for new properties coming to us, if you feel you want to improve your existing property, from adding an extension to enable you to have an extra room to rent, (and achieve more rent) to gardening/landscaping, and basic handyman services, Panda Property Maintenance can take care of it.
Get in touch to find out more.
Get Your HMOs Ready to Rent
Quite often people think that the end of the refurb means that a property is ready for the tenants. Once the refurb is done, as experienced property investors will know, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the HMO property ready for tenants.
Let’s first look at getting the property legal. Please note, these things are not one off and need to be renewed but don’t worry, our HMO Property Management team will take care of it for you.
If there is gas in the property, you will need a Gas Safety Certificate and Carbon Monoxide alarms are a legal requirement to be fitted by any fixed combustion appliance. Similarly, you will need smoke alarms. The electrics of the property have to be check and an EICR issued. To let a property, the property must have an Energy Performance Certificate and achieve at least the minimal rating to be rented out. PAT Testing is not a legal requirement (maybe a licensing requirement) but you need to show that any electrical appliances that you provide are safe. A PAT test is the best way to do this.
Most HMOs these days require a license, we can help you with the paperwork and get all of the required documents for you, such as floor plans etc.
If you are furnishing a property, all furniture must be fire resistant and have the required fire safety labels.
That may seem like a lot and a bit daunting but don’t worry, we can take care of it all for you by working with our carefully selected partners. In HMOs as well as providing the furniture you will need all kitchen appliances and equipment. A post refurb property can feel a bit clinical. We can give the property a homely feel by getting pictures hung and other little touches that will make your property stand out.
Don’t worry, we can take care of it all, from post refurb cleans, licensing, certificates, furniture, staging, for HMOs we will even make sure there is cutlery in the draws and tea towels ready to go!
Get in touch for more information.
Why It Pays To Have Great HMO Property Management
Managing HMOs can be hardwork, especially if you don’t have the systems, procedures, training, experience and team in place to do it properly.
When HMOs go wrong, they can go REALLY wrong.
Below are some pictures of a room in a HMO that we managed. The tenant was charging a battery from an E-Bike in his room overnight and it exploded. It was only thanks to the other tenants and the fire safety equipment in the property that the tenant survived.
A fire in a HMO is probably the biggest way HMO Property Management can go wrong. This would cause many investors to panic about whether they had all of the required certificates, fire equipment etc. Our Landlord had nothing to worry about. All of the documentation and fire equipment was in place and working. The fire was contained to the one room thanks to the fire door being properly fitted and all of the tenants were alerted by the alarms in each of their rooms and managed to get themselves and the tenant in danger out of the property. In such situations it is the authorities responsibility to place blame. If there had been anything wrong with the property’s safety certificates, regular maintenance or fire equipment, the Landlord could have received massive fines or even a prison sentence. However, It was obvious to the authorities involved that this was a well managed HMO and no further action was taken against either the Landlord or us the Letting Agent.
If you want to sleep well at nights, get in touch to make sure you have professional HMO property management.
Lettings - Rent Your HMO
Let Me Manchester started life as a Property Lettings Agency heavily involved with HMOs from the outset but has grown to offer a full set of property services. We have many years of experience with HMOs. Let Me Manchester are able to deliver a unique level of marketing and management of HMO properties, to include full property management, referencing and rent collection.
For a property investor, HMOs / shared houses can be a fantastic investment. However, if you don’t have the right Property Manager, they can quickly become a nightmare. Managing HMOs is different to managing single lets, this can result in an inexperienced HMO Letting Agent creating major issues for the Landlord.
We are experienced HMO Manchester Property Management providers who manage multi let properties across Greater Manchester. In particular, we manage a number of properties in the HMO Hot Spots of Salford, Swinton, Eccles and Stockport. Whether your shared houses are all en-suite, studio units or have shared facilities we can manage them. We manage Mini-MOs all the way up to large super-HMOs all around Greater Manchester.
If you are looking for a Manchester HMO Property Management specialist and HMO letting agent in Greater Manchester, get in touch to find out more.
Estate Agency - Sell Your HMO
It may sound counterintuitive as a Property Investor to sell an income producing asset but sometimes there are valid reason to realign your property portfolio.
As a boutique Greater Manchester HMO property specialist, we have a deep understanding of the Manchester HMO market and can position your HMO to get you the best outcome for you. If you are looking to sell some or all of your HMO portfolio, we can work with you to maximise the value in your asset(s) and then manage the sale and your exit from the investment.
Get in touch to find out more.
Education, Mentoring & Consultancy
We are not a Property Investment Training company and have no plans to become one. However, we continue to hear painful stories about peoples experiences with some of the Property Investment Training companies. As we are specialists in the Greater Manchester Property market we often get asked to help people on their property journey. To help tackle this we offer a simple range of great value services to help to help HMO Property Investors.
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Viewings
We accompany you on a viewing giving you our view on the opportunity, area and ways to add value. £95.
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1-2-1 Guidance
Either face to face or virtually. These sessions can be used to ask us anything that will help you on your property journey. £95 per hour.
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Mentoring
This service is for those that want to really accelerate their property journey. You get weekly 1 hour sessions with one of our Directors and are able to contact them between sessions for extra guidance and support. £395 per month.
The viewings service will be provided by a senior member of our team. For the 1-2-1 guidance, get in touch and let us know what you want to cover so that we can connect you with the most appropriate member of our team. The Mentoring is provided by our two most senior Directors. Below is a little more about them:
Phil Buckley is the Founder of Let Me Manchester and the Managing Director of the business. Phil's knowledge of the Greater Manchester property market and HMOs is second to none, making him the ideal person to have in your corner to guide you building your property portfolio.
Paul Darvell is Non-Executive Director of Let Me Manchester. Paul is an experienced Property Investor with a wealth of Property and Business experience. Paul is an active HMO investor. Paul holds an MBA and is a qualified Life Coach. Paul can help you to build a strategy to fulfil both your professional and personal goals.
Paul and Phil work closely together. So even if you are being mentored by one of them, the other can jump in and provide guidance in their areas of expertise, so it is like having two mentors instead of one. Get in touch to find out more.