Renting HMOs Sussed – a practical guide to managing an HMO

This is a lovely book, full of the warmth of human kindness.

Which is not something you would expect in HMO world, but HMO Landlady is like that. She gets infuriated with her tenants, but understands them and has sympathy with their problems.

I hope they appreciate her, as I doubt they will get such sympathetic treatment from some other HMO landlords.

There are some great bits in this book. I particularly liked the house rules (p32) – eg

• Rule #5 “I will collect your rent from a pre arranged location … Please don’t ask me to hunt for it in .. your pants drawer – I am NOT your mother”, and
• Rule # 7 “Put some clothes on before you answer your door to me”

There are also quite a few stories about tenants and the mad things that they do. I won’t say any more as you need to buy the book and read them.

Being a curmudgeonly old lawyer, I did wince a bit at some of HMO Landlady’s pronouncements on legal matters. But thats not really what the book is about.

And anyway there’s nothing wrong with Ben’s chapter – yes thats our own Ben Reeve Lewis, who contributed the legal bit at the end. Well almost the end.

What this book has in spades is lots of practical information about actually running an HMO and the sort of things you have to expect. And some tips on dealing with them.

If you want more of the same, you can read it at HMO Landlady’s blog.

The only negative is that £10.89 might to some seem a bit expensive for such a slim volume. However if you ARE considering the HMO path, £10.89 for a book that will actually help you (and is easy to read) is considerably better value that some other book with more pages and less practical help.

You will find it on Amazon >> here.