More than one in five HMO tenants (21%) have felt unsafe at some point during their tenancy because of a housemate.

COHO’s survey of 5,000 UK HMO tenants reveals that this figure rises to more than one in four (27%) among those aged 45 and over, while men (22%) were also slightly more likely than women (21%) to report having felt unsafe.

It also found that rising rents, a shortage of affordable housing and the difficulty of getting onto the property ladder are making shared living popular amongst all ages – not just students or those at the beginning of their careers. More than 40% of these tenants are aged 30 or over, of which 89% are in paid work, according to COHO’s data, while 55% say shared living is a lifestyle choice rather than a last resort.  

There are currently 482,788 HMOs across England and Wales, according to the National HMO Register, housing more than 2 million people.  

Compatible

According to COHO, landlords have also seen average shared living tenancies increase from six to 18 months when housemates are selected based on their compatibility, with many tenants (40%) willing to accept higher rent for compatible housemates.

It believes a bad match tends to cost the good tenants around it. To make tenancies last, COHO advises a brief check-in around the 12-to-18-month mark, a bit of thought about who fills a room when someone leaves rather than taking the first application, and creating a shared space that people actually want to use.

“We ask people to share their homes with complete strangers, yet in many cases they are given little or no information about who they are going to live with,” says CEO Vann Vogstad. “Tenants feeling unsafe in their own home, even once, is not something the sector can ignore.  

Comfortable

“We need to move away from simply filling rooms and start thinking about creating homes where people actually feel comfortable living together.”

The average cost of converting a property into an HMO is estimated at more than £82,000 across England, according to new research by residential property management specialist Rushbrook, with an average of £15,275 needed per bedroom, based on an average HMO size of 5.37 bedrooms.

When factoring in the estimated purchase price of an eligible three or four-bedroom property, it puts the average total cost of purchasing and converting this into an HMO at £531,882. For landlords who would rather buy an existing HMO, Rushbrook’s analysis identified 2,507 licensed HMO property listings across England, with an estimated average asking price of £340,264.

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