4 bedrooms into 6. This HMO is in an excellent location for working professionals, close to the local town centre and train links into central London. We viewed it as a 4 bedroom house. The owner had started to do some conversion works, probably with a view to renting it to sharers, but the house hadn’t been fully converted. It had some odd quirks, like a shower room off the living room, and the biggest bathroom I have ever seen.

It is a 3 storey townhouse, with an integral garage that had been converted to a bedroom. We quickly saw the potential in the layout to create more lettable rooms. With a some creative rearranging of the floorplan we were able to reconfigure it to provide 6 good sized bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a kitchen diner.

As it is a 3 story property with 6 rooms it needs to be licensed by the local council as an HMO. This means also complying with all space and safety requirements. Even before purchasing, our first step was to contact the council and check on the requirements to make sure that we would be able to get a license. The local HMO officer was helpful in this respect, and able to advise on all the necessary upgrades.

The kitchen in this property was large enough to work as a kitchen diner, with space for a couch, which meant that the former living room with adjacent shower room became a large, en-suite bedroom. The huge bathroom on the top floor was reduced in size to make a generous shower room, plus a large double bedroom. These 2 new rooms, in addition to the previous 4, have given us 6 bedrooms. Aside from reconfiguring and upgrading the fire detection system, fire doors and closers, remaining works were mainly cosmetic. We went with a light, bright contemporary look, and have found that rooms in this property let quickly.