HMO Management 2.0

HMO’s are a great source of income for both: landlords, due to a higher yield and agents, due to higher management fees.

But HMOs are not entirely straight forward to manage and require meticulous attention to detail and thorough record keeping. The best way to handle HMO management, as with most things in life, is simple – to stay on top of the admin. Doesn’t sound too difficult you may say? Knowing which areas need attention and which tools are available will help you.

Four HMO areas of focus

When managing a HMO property, we suggest focusing on the following four areas:

Thorough record keeping of all past and current tenancies and their terms.
Reliable and safe file storage.
Efficiently keeping track of compliance certificates and upcoming appointments.
Communication with Landlords and Tenants.

1. Keeping track of tenancies

While providing terms of current and past tenancies to The Local Authority isn’t required when applying for a HMO licence, thorough record keeping is strongly advised by The Property Ombudsman’s Code of Practice.

There is no longer a need in storing countless text files with the terms of each previous, current and upcoming tenancies. Here at Rentancy we understand the importance of data management and record keeping, therefore we made keeping track of all of your tenancies simple and intuitive. Rentancy is optimised for managing HMO properties, meaning that you can add, create and modify any number of tenancies under one HMO property.

Here is how it works.

2. Reliable and safe file storage

While it may seem like an obvious point to bring up, most agents fail at it, which sooner or later may end up resulting in loss of data. According to The Property Ombudsman’s Code of Practice, every Estate Agent must keep clear and full written records of all property transaction details for the period of 6 years. This includes all of the safety certificates, terms and conditions between the landlord and the agent, applicant’s referencing documents and so on.

Considering that on average there are around a dozen documents required to be collected and stored for a HMO application, and half-a-dozen for each let-out unit, safe and reliable storage should be given the importance it deserves.

The solution

Safe and reliable cloud-based storage for all of your property files included with your account at no extra cost? Yes please! Rentancy has been developed with HMO management in mind, therefore you can attach files to any given tenancy or property file, as well as any contact or an organisation.

3. Compliance certificates and maintenance

Nothing is more important than staying on top of the compliance certificates and their expiry dates, as well as general property maintenance to keep the market value of the property.

Setting up countless reminders of expiration dates for the compliance documents, as well as keeping track of upcoming inspections and maintenance appointments becomes exponentially more difficult with the use of external diaries and excel spreadsheets.

With Rentancy, all property related activities beginning with recurring events like rental due dates or property inspections and ending with compliance certificate renewals or any other custom events are combined in one easy-to-use list, located only one click away from the property’s main page.

4. Effective communication

By default, managing a HMO property suggests managing multiple tenancies at the same time. This therefore requires staying in touch with multiple tenants, contractors and the landlord. Using multiple mediums of communication such as emails, text messages, phone calls and others can quickly become overwhelming and confusing. Sending files, giving notice for any upcoming inspections and maintenance appointments doesn’t need to be labour-intensive and hard to keep track of.

With Rentancy, all of the property-related communication is designed to take place directly on the platform. Simply invite your Landlords, Tenants and Contractors to stay in touch with them. Create groups and send attachments if required. Archive and export the correspondence with a click of a button.