To wish Homes Under The Hammer …

[BownnTown]

Wouldn’t feature HMO “renovations” and renos from the white walls box clan?

Everytime I watch the houses are transformed into characterless white boxes or scruffy HMOs. Why can’t they focus on actual HOME renovations? Nobody cares about bloody HMOs

Presumably because landlords are the only ones winning the auctions. I agree it doesn’t make for good tv.

YANBU.

What annoys me are these people who come on to this show with a folder full of their 'portfolio' of properties that they own, ready to add another one to it. Pisses me right off. 🙄 No-one should own more than one home.

But yeah, I am sick of HMOs too. And I agree that when they do these properties up, they are bland and dull!

They all look the same!
Cheap nasty kitchen, cheap nasty bathroom. White/magnolia painted walls and a greige carpet. A 4 bed home fully 'renovated' for approximately 5K doesn't scream quality job, no matter how much work they have done themselves.
I often wonder how long the tenants live there before paint starts peeling and the carpet starts to get worn out and manky.

Totally agree OP. Plus my heart sinks when they inevitably eradicate beautiful mature shrubs and trees and turn the garden into a box too.

I cannot watch this awful paean to landlord greed.

Go to an auction, buy a house do it up break this chain of despair. Oh hang on, you won’t do that. HMO‘s I’m just a modern day bed set they suit people at certain stage in their lives. What on earth is wrong with that?

Oh please, very rarely do HMOs / bedsits "suit" anyone at any time of their lives. Most people have little choice and are forced into them due to economic necessity / life circumstances. Residents are ripe for exploitation and are often regarded as "problematic" or "less worthy" of decent accommodation.

And yes, I do have direct experience from my student years in the 80s, and know people in them now. They are rife with poor security, poor shared facilities and while one can be grateful to have a roof at all, a leaky, mouldy one is hardly ideal either.

My bedsit years were wonderful. - yes it wasn’t flash sometimes but it was cheap and that’s what I could afford. I could’ve gone for the magic wand option I suppose jokes

I feel exactly the same. So sick of everything this programme stands for, and the constant displaying of HMOs as if they are anything other than the feeding of financial greed.

I know two men in their 70s who live in HMOs. That is not right. They can't afford anywhere else. They spend all day in pubs because it is too depressing to be trapped in one room at "home".

My DP was evicted from his 2 bed flat, and it has been converted into an HMO full of shoeboxes.

HMO might have a place as a temp thing but because of the costs of rents, people are in them as their permanent home and that is really sad. We are not battery hens.

Oh give over! HMOs suit landlords, people live in them because shitty landlords buy multiple properties, drive up the house/rent prices and price people out of normal housing.

Plus that’s beside the point, nobody wants to see them on HUTH, it’s boring!!

“oh look what I’ve done to this once beautiful 4 bedrooms Victorian house … I’ve turned in into 8 mini box rooms for poor people to live in”.

lovely 🙄

Sorry, I'm too busy trying to pay for the house I live in

What I find awful is they lower the ceiling height of previously beautiful victorian properties to make 3 floors of little 'cell' rooms.

At least make a building better not worse.

So you think it’s better that a wealthy family live in a single house rather than provide accommodation for eight different people?

There is the very real market demand for HMO's I don't have a problem with that, i just wish they'd use already existing commercial buildings, of which there are plenty, not beautiful Victorian houses and rip all the original features out.

Yes.

families need homes too believe it or not

go and turn a commercial building into HMOs. Leave the Victorian shit alone.

HUTH is a show about people buying property at auctions. Clearly these are the type of people buying property at auctions. Im not sure what the problem is? Watch a renovation programme that isn’t based on people buying property at auctions.

Well that's bollocks really isn't it. There are not enough places to keep all the victorian houses for the lucky few, a lot of them who can't afford it.

This is the truth about HMO properties.
Well put MistressoftheDarkSide.

Yanbu I feel a little jolt of joy when someone buys a house that they are going to live in.

Those beautiful huge Victorian mansions in Notting Hill and Bayswater, for instance, were once full of single bedsits and double bedsits, some housing families per room. In post war Britain, there was an acute housing shortage. People have to live somewhere. There's an acute housing shortage now. I'd rather see suitably sized houses providing accommodation for single people that's at least semi-permanent for those who need it than yet another Air bnb.

Watch Grand Designs if you want the other end of the spectrum. Family with average income buy slightly out of date 3 bed semi probate sale, knock down a couple of walls, put in a breakfast bar and a pod for a garden office whilst adding a lick of paint doesn’t fit the ‘turn a profit from a cheap auction or make a massive loss for not reading the legal pack narrative. The closest you’ll get to that is Love It Or List It. There’s property porn on telly for everyone’s taste.

Yeah, the housing horrors of the '80s came from title-splitting and hacking big houses up. HMOs feel like today’s version — some are done really well though and i get they're solving a problem, but why rip out original fireplaces or lower those beautiful 3m ceilings? Every room needs an en-suite now, so they’re unlikely to ever go back to proper family homes after that.

When HUTH started it was a lot of people buying their first house to do up, with the odd landlord thrown in. Now it's all landlords and the decor is the same in all of them. it's not good tv now.