Photo by Property Touch

It’s a new year and a great opportunity to improve your HMO management strategy!

With 2025 already here, it’s time to think about setting New Year’s resolutions for your HMO business. With some big changes on the way, including the Renters Rights Bill, property and tenant management and the service we provide should be key areas we all focus on improving this year!

Benefits of Improving Your HMO Management Strategy

Let’s start by talking about the benefits of improving your HMO management strategy… This part of owning a HMO is often considered one of the most challenging and time consuming, but getting this right is crucial to help you build a successful and sustainable HMO portfolio.

If you provide a great property and tenant management service, this can help keep your tenants happy. And happy tenants typically pay their rent on time and stay for longer, which can boost your profits!

Additionally, as standards are continuing to increase across the private rented sector and including within the HMO industry, you can get left behind if you don’t work on improving your management strategy…

As competition is increasing across the sector, modern tenants want more out of their properties, so it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. This will allow your property and service offering to be even more appealing to prospective tenants.

At times, you may need to rethink your HMOs and management strategy to provide tenants with the service and property they’re looking for, so be open to making changes and adapting your products along the way!

How to Take Your Management to the Next Level

Now let’s get into how you can really level this part of your property business up. Here are seven things to do to help you improve your HMO management strategy and set goals in this area for the year ahead!

Improve your strategy for filling rooms.

For starters, it’s important to look at how you can improve your strategy for filling your rooms. SpareRoom is one of the main platforms you’ll use when it comes to this. The better you become at using the platform, the quicker you’ll be able to fill your rooms, the better tenants you’ll be able to secure and the more profitable you’ll be!

Start by looking at the ways you can better use and master SpareRoom. Assess the data in your local area, get your adverts right, utilise featured ads, understand the different upgrade features, regularly renew your adverts and reply to tenant enquiries as quickly as possible. 

Throughout 2025, make sure you’re using SpareRoom like a pro. Stay on top of all of this because this is what you need to do to really boost your strategy for filling rooms, help you stay at the top of the listings and reduce your void periods.

Create systems and processes.

You should implement systems and processes into every area of your portfolio, including property and tenant management. Setting up systems and processes involve writing down every step on how to deliver certain tasks. This allows you to create structure within your portfolio, ensure standards are being maintained and provide accountability!

Doing this effectively can help you be more efficient, productive and profitable and can help you have a lower tenant turnover. With hundreds of different laws in place within the HMO market, legislation and legal obligations are essential areas of your business you can apply this to. 

You can also do this for how you carry out tenant viewings and enquiries, move-ins, move-outs, inspections and rent collection. The best time to start implementing this is right at the beginning of your HMO investment journey. 

If there are specific issues you’re having with managing your properties, analyse the ongoing issues, prioritise the most serious problems and activities, create Standard Operating Procedures and then audit this area of your business.

On top of that, there are ways you can achieve more, while working less. This includes batching your processes and finding tasks you can simplify, automate, delegate or eliminate. So, it’s important to take a look at how you can be more efficient with your time.

Boost your maintenance strategy.

Dealing with maintenance swiftly and efficiently is a key way to keep your tenants happy, but it also helps ensure your property is maintained properly and prevents anything from getting worse and costing you more money later down the line. Above all, you need to ensure your properties are safe and liveable but also that tenants are content living there. 

No matter where your property is located, the types of tenants you have or the age and size of your properties, there are things that you can do to improve your maintenance strategy and reduce your maintenance costs. 

Focus on being proactive when it comes to property maintenance. Don’t just wait for things to happen before you deal with them as this can cost you more money and make your tenants unhappy. Undertake thorough inspections regularly. Keep in mind that these shouldn’t be a quick whirl around the property – they should be detailed health checks.

Additionally, create a clear maintenance policy. This helps set and manage expectations. Urgent and emergency items of course need to be taken care of quickly, but some things don’t. So, by setting these expectations from the outset, it takes some pressure off and buys yourself time to get the right people in and shop around for the right materials!

It’s also helpful to use a team of trusted and skilled tradespeople and negotiate labour rates with them. Ask for photographic evidence of the work that’s been carried out, insist on guarantees and avoid paying invoices straightaway. 

Keep up with the latest compliance and legislation changes.

We are expecting some big changes to impact the private rented sector and landlords’ regulatory obligations. Because of that, be sure you stay on top of what’s happening with any relevant legislation. 

For example, the Renters Rights Bill is currently making its way through Parliament, and this may change certain parts of your property management. While we don’t know timelines yet, many are expecting this to take effect sometime in 2025. 

The main proposals within the Renters Rights Bill include abolishing Section 21 evictions, restricting rent increases to once a year, introducing the Decent Home Standards and Awaab’s Law and abolishing fixed-term tenancies.

Moving forward, additional legislative changes could also be on the horizon. As a HMO investor, you need to stay up-to-date with the industry regulations. Put measures in place so you can ensure that you keep up with the latest industry updates.

Find ways to provide a more superior management service.

HMO property management can be difficult and take up a lot of time, and this is expected to get even more difficult moving forward.! Getting this area right is key to the success of your HMOs, so look at how you can boost your management service. 

Providing a superior property management strategy allows you to set yourself above the competition and ensure your tenants continue to enjoy living in your HMOs. With that in mind, HMO landlords need to be responsive and proactive. 

With your management service, you’ll need to always keep up with changing compliance and figure out how to communicate with tenants effectively. Property management isn’t for everyone, so if you’re not able to put the time in you need to do this, you’ll need to consider if hiring an experienced managing agent might be right for you.

Become a local expert.

It’s important to become an expert and understand the ins and outs of the local HMO market. What’s happening with supply and demand? What’s the competition doing? SpareRoom is a great place to start with this as the platform has tons of data that can help you understand supply and demand and competition in a specific area.

Spend time on understanding your local HMO market and how to attract the right tenants to your HMOs. It’s also essential to figure out where your product fits in the market, so know the ins and outs of room prices, property specs and what your competitors are offering.

Becoming a local expert can help you get top rents and create the best product and service, so look at this information in detail. Don’t make assumptions or go off what others tell you – figure this out for yourself!

Find ways to boost your tenant management strategy.

Tenants naturally need us for lots of different things, and all sorts of questions and issues can pop up at any time. At times, you’ll need to be on hand pretty quickly to answer questions or resolve certain issues your tenants have. So, how do you go about managing your tenants?

Find ways to wow and impress your tenants throughout their entire tenancy. You could do little things such as sending birthday cards, offering free pizza nights or entering them into a competition where they can get free rent for a month. If you can find unique ways to give your tenants an experience they’re not expecting, you could put yourself on a pedestal above the competition! 

Additionally, no matter how good your tenant matching strategy is, some difficult tenants will slip through the net and upset their housemates and even cause some to leave. So, if you have a problematic tenant, don’t stand by – step in and deal with this.

4 Tips to Help Your Boost Your Management Service This Year

Here are some of my top tips to help you work on boosting your HMO property management service in 2025 and beyond!

1. Get the right professionals on your power team.

The ongoing challenges and upcoming changes will be difficult to deal with on your own, but there are still plenty of opportunities for HMO landlords with the right support. There are professionals who can provide key services to help you manage your properties, such as tradespeople, an interior designer and managing agent if you’re not going to self manage.

Having the right professionals on your power team will allow you to remain compliant and boost your service offering. You’ll also be better placed to deal with the upcoming industry changes and create a more sustainable HMO business.

2. Consider adopting technology.

Using technology in your HMO business can allow you to remain compliant and keep up with recurring tasks and activities and obligatory requirements as a landlord. You can also track tenant complaints, maintenance and repairs.

Additionally, automating tenant communication can allow you to respond promptly and manage expectations on timelines for handling maintenance and dealing with other issues that arise.

3. Invest in property education.

You’ll need to keep learning about property management and any changes to best practice. We should always be trying to improve and expand our knowledge, so it can be beneficial to invest in property education to help you with this!

There are a range of products and services available in this industry. You can start by taking advantage of free resources like listening to The HMO Podcast and using e-learning platforms like The HMO Roadmap, which provide resources, knowledge, templates and step-by-step plans. Working with a mentor can also provide valuable guidance, support and accountability.

4. Build a roadmap.

Now you can start building a roadmap to improving your HMO management strategy this year and beyond. Writing down a plan on paper will allow you to better understand what you’re trying to improve, and then you can start creating a list of tasks and activities to help you do just that!

You don’t need to have everything mapped out at this point, but start planning the first few steps and work on putting these pieces into action. Having this mapped out will allow you to focus on actionable steps.

Working on Your Property Management Service

If you’re looking to really level up your HMO business, boost your knowledge in the industry and get access to resources and templates for managing your HMOs, become a member of The HMO Roadmap today!

And if you have any questions about HMO property management, join us over in our free Facebook Group The HMO Community, which now has 10,000 members!

About the Author:

Andy Graham is the founder and the lead trainer at The HMO Roadmap! He is also the co-founder of The HMO Mastermind, writes as a regular columnist in different magazines about a variety of HMO topics and is the host of The HMO Podcast! Follow Andy on Instagram!