To have handed the new owners the no more HMO letter from the council regarding the street.

I know first hand it happens

For those wondering about issue with HMOs.

HMOs themswlves are not an issue. I lived in few too. It's too many HMOs in the same place which are an issue.
It creates generally transient spaces where people don't have any attachment to the area, many get tenant issues (like too many student HMOs etc) affecting the rest of the street etc. I would not buy on a street with many HMOs because I saw what they can do. Overwhelmed bins, too many people and cars streets and houses were not designed for, public transport issues, noise, etc.
There are examples up and down the country of people being stuck in hell because 15 out of 20 houses became HMO on the same street.

Limiting number of HMOs per area is actually great. You still have some, but not enough to overwhelm.

It does if there is an Article 4 Direction

Do we need a rental market?
Yes ✅

Do we need a situation where buy to let landlords are able to outcompete potential owner occupiers and push up the price of housing so that normal people can't afford a decent place to live?
No❌

Never going to happen. We need a rental market.

Absolutely. I think all 2nd home owners should be taxed through the roof. HMO landlords, normal landlords, holiday home owners, the lot. While rent caps are enforced so they can’t pass the cost on, hopefully it’ll become unprofitable and prices plummet meaning that more people can buy and the govt should buy others up so they can rent stuff out at a reasonable rate as social housing,

Yes, how about the landlords of HMOs being taxed more so that they pay out of their profits towards the social costs of their residents?

And huge fines for the ones with HMOs who aren't compliant with H&S, local authority regulations, etc.

Another factor is that often the "problem" tenants aren't even local and were transported in to run down/cheaper areas, often by the local councils, or by gangmasters, etc. After all the poor Chinese cockle pickers who perished in Morecambe Bay had been living in very poor conditions in HMOs, several to a room in mattresses on the floor, certainly weren't "local" to Morecambe! Nor the newly released prisoners literally bussed into places like Morecambe and Blackpool from all over the UK.

Sure. But then that antisocial behaviour needs dealing with. And support for people with mental health issues, etc. We can’t say that HMOs are ok but only for nice people. The not so nice people still need to live somewhere and if private HMOs weren’t available then the chances are the council would have to have more hostels/sheltered accommodation and I’m not sure the behaviour would be any different. Or they’d be homeless and also causing issues.

We have a 3 bed semi and there is a house a few doors down the same style that is an HMO with SIX bedrooms! They must have split the lounge into two bedrooms and either had a loft conversion or extension.

What are you talking about? It happens at all levels of council and governments. Contracts given to their mates even though their companies have no track record of being competent for the job, red tape moved aside, permits granted which should be refused, on and in it goes… then the councillor/MP leaves office and suddenly has a job in the private sector with one of those people they helped. Or bit donations come in, or someone’s family member gets a job. You really are a bit dim if you think it doesn’t happen in the UK and seem to think it is solely south africa. Very very weird.

They need to apply for permission to turn the property into a HMO .
They will be refused so I wouldn’t worry OP

True, but those who whistleblow will be targeted by those who lose out because of the whistle blowing.
We would all like to stand up for what's right but if the cost is losing your job and being seen as a liability for future employers it's not such an easy thing to do 😬

We have several in my not very long road so I very much understand people's objections to them.

The problem is that there are vast numbers of people reliant on being able to access this type of housing, and there really aren't any other options for them as far as either social housing or the private sector.

What happens to these people if there's massive resistance to the building of new HMO's? We just accept that high levels of homelessness are tolerable for low income single people, to protect the quality of life of those who are already housed?

I think that in most places outside London, it’s unusual for ‘normal’ houses (terraces/ semi-detached) to be divided into flats as there hasn’t been the same housing pressure. I live quite centrally and near a university, and there’s a couple of larger terraced houses near me that have been divided into flats, but that’s all. There are also some newer developments that are mainly purpose-built flats. So yes, I think most people will live on streets where most of the houses are owned by one person (whether as occupier or landlord).

And as people have previously said, HMOs are not the issue, it’s the concentration of HMOs in one area that can cause problems with parking, rubbish etc.

It's not young professionals in HMOs that's the problem. It's the druggies, unemployed, mental health sufferers, criminals, illegal immigrants, etc. People in "naice" areas with young professionals won't understand what streets full of HMOs with social problem tenants are like - they need to leave their naice areas and take a look at places like Blackpool.

Only if he told the solicitor of his intentions. Solicitors aren't mind readers.

People say streets shouldn’t be overwhelmed with HMOs - in an ideal world no they shouldn’t. But also in an ideal world young professionals would be able to afford to buy or even rent a whole house yet they can’t. 🤷‍♀️. If people (other than landlords) can’t afford to buy the houses then what happens? Ideally the property market needs to crash so normal people can buy again but people don’t seem to want that either.

Many cities and even rural areas have a property crisis, multiple people fighting to rent or buy one house so prices keep rising. Supply and demand. In Manchester a hmo might cost 550 a month, a studio flat will be 1k plus. So people need HMOs. Hopefully if Labour gets more houses/flats built then prices will fall, but nobody wants new houses built near them either.

Quite.

I think someone has been reading too many Tom Sharpe novels.

Could you keep your racist stereotypes to yourself please? Thanks.

I do live in an area that has quite a lot of HMOs (London one street away from a university) and I don't recognise that situation in my area.

There's the occasional student party and a bit of fly tipping down the side of my house (I think because it's not overlooked and there's no way to know who does it) but generally it's a quiet nice neighborhood. The main noise is from council run festivals they have in the park over the summer.

Poor you. Our council is really hot on this.

Would you be ok living in an area where you are completely surrounded by them? That is exactly what has happened a few miles from me. Long time residents have had to leave the area due to the partying, exploded bags of rubbish, damaged cars as people compete for parking spaces, furniture abandoned in gardens/alleyways, vandalism etc. These are a mixture of students (yeah, our future doctors/engineers/lawyers/accountants) and other young people who have heard about the 24 hour party atmosphere and fancied a slice of it. They wouldn’t behave like that in their family homes. It sounds extreme. It didn’t start out that way. It was a quiet family area in a bustling part of town. Now it’s like the Wild West and regularly features on the local news. If HMO’s had been limited to a certain proportion, this wouldn’t have happened, as the whole culture of the area wouldn’t have altered so drastically. I would never begrudge students their fun and their full immersion in student life, but this situation shows what can happen when HMO’s are allowed to increase unchecked.

I really can't understand this thread. I lived in HMO until my mid 30s. Nearly everyone I know lives in a HMO in London. How can anyone who is single live any other way in an expensive City? How is it any different to a house being divided into flats? Or do you all live on streets where everyone owns the whole house and there are no flats either? I don't get it.

I don’t get the hatred for HMOs on here. Maybe it’s just because this is Mumsnet and there’s a general “families good, young people bad” attitude.

Because instead of a stable community of owners, who have financial and emotional investment in the area, you have a revolving door of short-term renters. Some HMOs are, despite regulations, effectively slum housing. There is then a general increase in density, parking issues, noise, litter etc.

Sounds great!

I don't understand why there's so much prejudice against people living in non family units. Things are really hard for single people without reducing the places they can live even further.