Photo by Arch Investments
Knowing how to fill your HMO rooms with the right tenants is an important part of investing in HMOs. And doing this quickly and effectively helps you reduce void periods and makes your property business more profitable!
But this part of HMO investment comes with a lot of challenges. It can be difficult to keep up with filling your rooms, arranging viewings and converting them into tenancies. You may be spending hours managing enquiries only to find out that they’re not the right tenant for you or your property, and this could then cost you money!
Compared to investing in standard buy-to-lets, this is an area HMO investors need to spend more time on planning and executing. So, here’s 13 of my top tips to help you consistently fill your HMO rooms with the right tenants as quickly as possible!
1. Understand the Local Market
This process needs to start before you even purchase a property! From the beginning, you need to know how you’ll find tenants to fill your rooms. If you’re investing in a prime city centre area with big employers and a university, it’ll likely be easier to advertise to tenants and fill your rooms.
On the other hand, if you’re investing in a smaller town or a more peripheral location that’s up and coming, this will need to be factored in. It might not be as easy to keep your rooms filled in these locations, so think about what you need to do to make adjustments or to incentivise tenants to live there.
Keep in mind that if your property is on the wrong side of the city or town, even if it’s close to the campus or centre, tenants simply won’t want to live there. You may struggle no matter how good you make the property, which will likely mean you’ll need to compromise on the rents. This then might change the parameter of your deal entirely, so you need to get this right from the outset!
2. Assess the Data
There are tons of data out there that can help you understand what’s currently being offered in the HMO market and tenant demand for rooms in your investment location and across the country. Platforms like SpareRoom, Rightmove and OpenRent can provide a range of helpful data for your HMO investments.
Assessing the right data can help you understand the competition and supply and demand and manage expectations, so spend some time looking at the data available and figure out what’s happening in your area!
3. Find the Best Time to Advertise
Finding the best time to advertise your type of HMO can help give you a huge advantage in the market. Every location can be different, so it can be beneficial to get information from a local expert, such as a letting agent.
With student HMOs, it’ll naturally be based around the academic year. Students can often be looking for the following year’s accommodation as early as 12 months in advance! So, keep that in mind when deciding the best time to advertise your properties.
On the other hand, professional HMO tenants are much more transient. Some will be prompted to start searching once they’ve received a new job offer or when they’ve handed notice into their current landlord. Because of that, a lot of tenants look for a new place to rent around four weeks before they’re planning to move out. However, London is often an exception to this!
Research when’s the best month, week and day to advertise your type of HMO and in your investment location. If you’re unsure, you can always test publishing adverts at different times and evaluating the results.
4. Get Your Adverts Right
Crucially, you need to get your adverts right, and this includes getting the title, copy, key features, property description and outro all spot on. It all needs to capture your prospective tenants’ attention, and of course, the price needs to be competitive too.
Additionally, the photos you end up using, especially the leading photos, need to be high-quality. If you’re not a professional photographer, you shouldn’t be taking the photos yourself. A professional will have all the right equipment and be able to get the light conditions right to make your photographs the best they can possibly be!
If you don’t get certain parts of your adverts right, it means your rooms won’t be at the top of online listings. Try testing different things and see what works best, but always keep your target demographic in mind. And whenever you go live with your adverts, make sure you’re happy with all of the details, because relisting is not an effective solution as the algorithms are really clever.
5. Reply to Enquiries Quickly
When trying to fill your HMO rooms, it’s essential to focus on converting enquiries into viewings and viewings into tenancies. To set you on the right path to achieve this, you need to try to answer all enquiries within 15 minutes. Be engaging when prospective tenants reach out and aim to offer viewings within 48 hours of their first contact.
This might sound overwhelming… It certainly can be challenging to manage and keep up with all the enquiries you receive as this still includes ones that come in on weekends and at night. But do what you can to reply as fast as possible. If you don’t, other landlords will likely beat you to it, and you can lose out on great prospective tenants!
6. Master Using SpareRoom & Other Platforms
SpareRoom is like the Rightmove for letting rooms, so it’ll likely be one of the key platforms you’ll use when advertising your HMO properties. The better you become at using SpareRoom the quicker you’ll be able to fill your rooms!
Start by understanding the different features of the platform’s free and upgraded membership, including all the data, bold adverts and early-bird access to tenants. Additionally, there are featured ads as a pay-per-click service, but no matter what, make sure you’re regularly renewing your adverts.
You also need to decide if you’ll use other platforms to advertise your rooms. Research the different platforms available and find where you think you’ll get the best results. You can test out using a mix of platforms to see what works best for you.
7. Have a Great Tenant Matching Strategy
A detailed tenant matching strategy can help you find tenants who are of a similar age, are there for similar reasons and have similar interests. This will allow your tenants to more naturally build relationships and could maybe influence them to stay for longer. So, when you’re advertising your available rooms, make it clear the type of tenant you’re looking for.
We can’t get this right every time as there’s no exact science to this. But it’s important to put attention and time towards looking for people who have things in common. It’s helpful to ask prospective renters and your current tenants questions to pull this sort of information out. This will make it much easier to put tenants together who are more likely to enjoy living together.
8. Introduce Tenants at Viewings
If you have a HMO with friendly and engaging tenants that can actually help sell the accommodation, then it can be really beneficial to introduce prospective tenants to them during viewings. You need to take responsibility for ensuring a prospective tenant would fit in well and be able to strike up a conversation with your tenants.
When introducing them, you may be able to tell whether they’re going to get along or not. I’ve seen prospective tenants make decisions on the spot when that happens, and our tenants also often appreciate it. Of course, you need to be careful with this… If you have a household with some prickly tenants, then you’ll likely want to avoid doing this!
9. Generate Some Momentum
If you have a very popular room and you’re receiving an influx of enquiries and viewings lined up, tell those prospective tenants that! This creates scarcity. However, you must be genuine with this… There’s nothing worse than a salesperson doing this when it really doesn’t exist.
But if there is genuinely that scarcity, that can help fuel tenants to move quickly and book a viewing, which can help you generate momentum! On top of that, if lots of people are clicking on your room adverts, the algorithm will naturally keep you higher, and that’ll help you get viewings booked and ultimately, tenants secured.
10. Put Systems & Processes in Place
There are parts of the process of filling your HMO rooms that can be systemised, which can help you be as efficient and successful as possible. Implement the right structure and put systems in place for sending out reminders for viewings, notifications of access to existing tenants and follow-up messages after viewings.
On top of that, put together detailed processes for how enquiries should be managed and the way viewings should be carried out. This will help ensure you’re organised, and it’ll help you boost your chances of securing tenancies!
11. Consider Incorporating Value-Add Services
If you’re looking to boost demand in your HMOs, you could consider incorporating value-add services. This is all about providing a better service or product and creating a community and bonding experiences for your tenants. Examples of this can include:
- Upgrading the WiFi
- Offering laundry services
- Stepping up cleaning services
- Organising social events
What you should offer depends on the type of HMOs you operate, but if you own professional HMOs, particularly higher-end properties, it’s definitely worth considering these kinds of services you could add on!
12. Adapt to Changes
As property preferences can change over time, what HMO tenants are looking for can evolve. Because of that, understanding your target tenants’ up-to-date needs and motivations will also help you stay ahead of the competition and allow your property to be in higher demand.
It’s essential to keep reinvesting into your HMOs and be willing to make changes. You need to be economical about this, but you must ensure your property is right for your target tenants. And to do that, you might need to touch up the decor and replace furniture from time to time.
So, make sure you’re aware of the current market and what your target tenants are looking for. This can allow you to make informed decisions on your properties, help you future proof your portfolio and boost demand in your rooms!
13. Audit Your Strategy & Processes
Finally, it’s also important to regularly audit how successful your strategy is for filling rooms. Review your systems and staff performance to check that services and tasks are being carried out to the right standard. This can help you ensure you’re getting the performance you need out of your business, staff and yourself.
This can also provide an opportunity to find how you and your staff can improve this part of your HMO business. When auditing this area, ensure your staff understand the rules and systems and are following what you’ve trained them to do. After undertaking an audit, it’s also crucial to provide feedback on the results so that staff know what they’re doing well and where they can improve!
Improve Your Strategy for Filling HMO Rooms
These are some of the things you need to make sure you’re doing to fill your HMO rooms as quickly as possible! If you’re able to do this efficiently, you’ll be able to build a really successful and sustainable HMO business.
To gain access to training and guidance to help you fill your HMO rooms with the right tenants, become a member of The HMO Roadmap! You can also gain access to documents and resources, such as the new Tenant Acquisition Marketing Plan Template, to help you with this part of your business.
And to be a part of our ever-growing community of HMO investors, join us over in our free Facebook Group The HMO Community! You can start a conversation, ask your burning questions or discuss anything about HMO investment with our supportive and inspiring community.
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!