Watch: Women in property HMO investment and management insights

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Welcome everybody. This is super exciting. Can I just say how amazing it is to see everybody here in this room supporting this as well in such a wonderful way. This is super exciting for me because this is the first ever Girls in Property panel that has been hosted at the HMO Summit which is a massive, massive achievement. So first of all to all the women and the men in this room, thank you for always supporting women and girls in property. So yay, brilliant.

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So what was really interesting was, was Van asked me a year ago to host this panel and he said to me, Athena, you can choose the topic and you can choose the speakers that you want to have on in terms of the ladies. And I have chosen three incredible women for you today who all have different backgrounds within the HMO industry that we can all learn from today and take something away. when we spoke about this the other day, we wanted to make it as impactful as possible for you all to take nuggets and learn from as well.

super exciting. girls, you ready? We’re ready. Okay, so as always, in true girls and property style, as I always do on the podcast, can you first of all, go through individually introducing yourself, so that everyone can know your background. So when we answer the questions, they know, but also let us know something you’re celebrating at the moment. So Celia, let’s start with you. Hi, I’m Celia Seale. And yes, that really is my name. I am based up in Liverpool where I invest. Can you not

by my Scouse accent. No, I’ve been living there for quite a few years now. I used to be a teacher and back in 2021 I gave up all of that to become a property investor. So I started out with no houses whatsoever. I’d done it all around the wrong way. I gave up my job before I even had my very first HMO and I bought a tiny little terrace property and I turned it into a three bed HMO. We had lodgers that have lived with us for many years and they were all from a specific dance college.

just around the corner and they would live with us for one year and then they would go off and find their own properties and I thought you know what I could probably get a property for them to live in. By that stage I kind of got to know them as individuals and I wanted to nurture these young girls because they were they were important in my life so I found them a property and I renovated it and I turned it into a little three bed HMO and I still have that one and then I thought this is going to be interesting I could do this again so I did it again and again and now I have

mixed portfolio. have semi-commercial block of flats and HMOs, some students and some professionals. So what am I celebrating? Well, I was hoping to celebrate the block of flats that were supposed to have completed on Wednesday, but in true fashion, it hasn’t gone through, which is really frustrating. It’s supposed to go through on Monday now. So I’m going to celebrate my family business. Some of my properties are student ones. I rent out a service accommodation over the

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summer. This year I’ve handed it all across to my 21 year old daughter and she has just taken it on and absolutely run with it. She’s linking all sorts of different apps to her phone, she’s communicating with the cleaners, she’s absolutely amazing and I even roped in my 20 year old son yesterday and he did some maintenance in some of the gardens so it’s all good so that’s what I’m celebrating today. Amazing, just the people behind the HMOs we say. Absolutely. Kim what about you?

Yes, so I’m Kim Opshauer. I’m one half of Como Properties, which I run with my husband and we have a mixed portfolio. We’ve been investing since 2016. We have blocks of flats and professional and student HMOs. We invest strictly in Article 4 areas and I can talk about that another time. We actually like Article 4 and yeah, we have a complete mix. We’ll be at about 70 units by the end of the year. Most of those owned, we have a couple of rent to rents that

are great for the cash flow of the business. I’m a corporate lawyer so my day job is mergers and acquisitions but property is definitely my passion and travel as David said earlier. So a couple of years ago during Covid we, the royal we, my husband, converted a van into a camper van. For the past two and a half years we’ve spent 90 days in Europe, 90 days in England. Our son started school recently so it’s all stopped but we still travel a lot.

What am I celebrating? So we had a planning win last month. We had a sui generis HMO application that had 190 neighbour objections and two councillor objections. So went to committee and it was in the national press, the local press. It was a very stressful situation. I actually almost had a heart attack. So I’ll tell you the background. My Apple Watch just before I

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about to speak, alerted me that my heart rate was through the roof and I wasn’t moving. Did I want to call emergency services? Because it was going so fast, it was like, what’s wrong? True story. So yeah, I did almost have a heart attack. But we got the planning, we got eight votes to one, so it was approved. So yeah, massive, I think I’ll celebrate that for the rest That’s a huge achievement, well done.

Sophie. Hi, hi everyone, I’m Sophie. My background is scuba diving. I spent my 20s as a scuba diving instructor, working my way around Southeast Asia, living my best life. Then my husband, Simon and I bought a beach in Indonesia and built our own scuba diving resort. That’s for a separate event and we need to write a book about it. But we had our kids out there and then moved back to England so they could go to school here. And then we fell into the world of rent to rent, which is an amazing business model. I absolutely love it. And in four years, we’ve now got 32 HMOs across.

Southampton and Bournemouth and we’ve grown our team who are here today. David and Laura you’re amazing. And I’m celebrating back in November I did a bit of a bonkers deal where I signed 10 HMOs in a day all to be given the keys on the 1st of July so we spent months preparing for this moment. My team have been filling the rooms and yeah it’s gone well it could have been a massive liability but it’s all good. Good planning helped. Can you see why I chose these three women?

in to speak to us today for the panel. They all have such amazing backgrounds and have done incredible things. So great celebrations, ladies. So today, guys, what we want to talk about with our questions is the human side of HMOs. Because at the end of the day, we all have the portfolios of the HMOs. But who is it that’s actually running them? What is it like day to day actually running these HMOs? So let’s delve into that a little bit today with the questions. Right, ladies, question one to each of you. I think we’ll do it in reverse order this time, and that’s all right.

And then we’ll start with Sophie this time. So here’s the question.

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As individuals managing a HMO business, how has this journey impacted your personal life from family and relationships to financial wellbeing? Good question. Well, I think as business owners, the dream is all about financial freedom, which is time freedom as well. But as business owners, we also just want to chase the next thing and get on this ladder of success. So for me, the first couple of years were mad, good, crazy. I definitely suffered burnout.

of times. So for me it’s been about finding the balance of wanting to have the best business ever and scale it but to also think okay what is the level of success that I’m happy with why do we now need 50 HMOs why do we need a hundred and figuring out what those boundaries are and we’ve just moved to Dorset and having more beach days and actually working flexibly around the kids is really important to us so trying to grapple with that and we haven’t got that right yet.

Yeah, but I think it’s always just a constant journey, isn’t it? And I love what you said. It’s working out the end goal. It’s like, well, why are we doing this? Because you can set a goal of saying I want 10 HMOs in a year. And it’s like, yeah, but why? What’s the purpose of them? What’s it going to achieve? So I love that. And I love the fact you’re back by the beach where you belong. And Kim, what about yourself? Yeah, mine’s pretty similar, really. It was all about so when we started investing back in 2016, I was working in the largest law firm in the world at the time. So I was 100

our week was a normal week, it was crazy hours. Mike, my husband, was a chef at the time so he would work nights, weekends, I was working 24-7, it felt like. For us, entering the property market was primarily focused on achieving financial and time freedom. And similar to you, we went through a path of like just kept growing and then we’d almost replaced our old jobs with a new HMO business that took up all our time. But for us it was definitely the time and financial freedom and you know we

wouldn’t have been able to travel 90 days off 90 days on in our corporate jobs and you know it’s given us on a fantastic start in life you know not many five-year-olds can say they’ve been to sort of 25 countries and for us that was the whole point and I suppose we have we’ve got there. Where’s your favorite country you’ve been to? So in the campervan Sardinia. Yeah it’s really campervan friendly you can literally park on the beach a lot of places don’t like campervans there’s like signs everywhere

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everywhere saying don’t park here but Sardinia is really friendly and it’s just great country so yeah it was our favourite. one for the list definitely. Celia what about yourself?

So when I was a teacher, I was really constrained. I mean, to the point that I couldn’t even go to the toilet without the bell ringing. I was absolutely in a box. couldn’t go on holiday without it being holiday season, and therefore the prices were really expensive. I was really, really constrained. I was really constrained with my autonomy as well, because although I was in senior leadership in a school, even if I made a decision, I had to run it by so many people. And by the time it actually got implemented, it was just watered down to nothing.

bit fed up. mean it was actually, crunch point came was my mum has Alzheimer’s, she’s at latter stages of Alzheimer’s now and we were in the middle of Covid and we were in lockdown and I hadn’t seen my mum since August. It was about May, June time and a lot can change in that time so we were just coming out of one of the lockdowns and I went to my head teacher whose father actually had only recently died of Alzheimer’s and I went to her and I said look can I take Thursday, Friday off work?

unpaid leave, can I take it unpaid leave and I’ll come back on Sunday ready to start work on Monday and she just looked at me and she said do you know what Celia I’m gonna say no and I just thought

I can’t cope with somebody having that much control over my life anymore. So I got in the car, had a really good cry. I got home and we had a discussion and I handed my resignation in the next week. And I just thought, I need that freedom. I need to be able to make those decisions for myself. And it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done really. So now, you know, just the other day I was sitting in the garden on a school day. was with couple of two with my daughter just sort

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of shooting the breeze and just talking about all sorts of stuff. Shooting the breeze? Yes, you do, your 21 year old daughter. Yeah, so we were just chatting away and it was, it’s really precious, it’s really, really special to be able to do those things and in fact from here I’m going down to go and see my mum straight after this so it’s just, you know, it just shows that if you’re your own boss you make the decisions for yourself and you have that autonomy. I know Simon Sinek about your reason why and it is that is so important to me it’s my reason why.

Wow, that’s absolutely incredible. Do you feel like that was your light bulb moment? Absolutely. So she did you a favour almost? Yeah, yeah she did. I looking back, I mean I was really upset and really sad and she was quite surprised that I handed my resignation in and at the time I wanted to stand my feet and tell her reasons why and now I don’t really need to do that because actually she did me a favour. now, you know, the business is mine and my husband’s and we’re making it work for us and it’s really hard work, right?

really really hard work but it’s certainly worth it. anybody here still in full-time employment? Just raise your hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who here isn’t but like they had like a light bulb moment where they were like I can’t be in this job anymore? Anyone here? Yeah, we’ve all had that moment haven’t we where we’ve gone screw all of you I’m gonna go do this myself and for those who are still in full-time employment it absolutely is possible to get yourself to where Celia is today.

The piece of advice I give is I see a lot of people sometimes jump too soon as well. They can sometimes go too quickly and then therefore they put pressure on themselves. You’ll have your moment but just make sure it’s the right moment for you as well. But well done, that’s amazing. And we gave ourselves a year and I think really we probably should have given ourselves three years. And that’s the reality. It’s a slow burner. It’s not a get rich quick in 90 days and I want to make sure we speak about that but fantastic. Right, brilliant answers ladies.

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Thank very much. second question. I’m going to mix it up. knows what I’m going to ask first. Second question.

As a HMO landlord and business owner, when did you know it was time to invest in staff and build your power team to support growth? We often start by doing everything ourselves. So who was the first key person you brought in and why was that role so important? Kim, I’m going to come to you first. So our first investment in 2016 was a small block of flats. So it was ASTs and we ran that ourselves for a couple of years.

when we got our first HMO, it was a seven-bedroom and I think pretty soon after that we got a Filipino VA. As I said earlier, we were both working, you know, quite long hours and so having…

this seven bedroom HMO all of a sudden, the admin that comes with that, the tenants leaving, coming and going. We still did a lot of it ourselves, but we did recruit quite early on a Filipino VA just to help with the heavy lifting on admin, so the stuff behind the scenes. And then we’ve still got Filipino VA in our business now, but the team has grown as the business has grown. And you ask, how did you know it was necessity? We were just so busy ourselves in order to run a decent business.

we needed an extra pair of hands. Probably not the right way to do it. It was kind of, we were already sinking at the point that we recruited, but it works. Yeah, but you know what, happened to me as well. I was at the point of sinking before I actually hired people because I felt like I, well one, I could do it all myself, but I was really conscious about cashflow. And I was still building the business. I was still building it. I was like, well, I can’t afford to do it, but there comes a point where you can no longer build the business or the portfolio without having it. And so,

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you have to almost make that investment in the short term for the bigger picture. Starting, it’s that fanning of the flames when you start. Sophie, what about you? So I’ve kind of brought people in slowly, bit by bit. I think it’s scary to hire a full-time employee when you’re not quite ready. As we built the business, my husband came in full-time, the amazing Simon, who’s working for the ambulance service in the control centre. And I was like, can you come and do a few draws? OK, can you come and paint a couple of rooms? And it just got big.

So he came in full time and was amazing at helping me with the refurbs, taking on new deals. One of them was the most disgusting seven bed student house, like you can smell it, it’s sticky, that kind of thing. smell of?

I can’t, I can’t tell you. It had too many tenants in it, it hadn’t been cleaned for a long time and I was walking around going, these room sizes are massive, this is great and Simon was behind me going, please don’t, please don’t, please don’t. So I took the deal on and said, right, how long are we going to need? And he said three months. So we did an amazing profitable deal on it. He basically lived there because he was renovating it and I got a call from a care home saying, we’ve got seven staff, they need rooms next week.

week, can you do it?” And I was like, yes, we can. So I said to Simon, right, how much work is left? And he’s we added it up. It was like 42 man days or something. So I was like, right, I need eight men for a week and then we can do this. And this is the power of the network and the power team. I reached out to everyone I knew in Southampton and we ended up with eight Hungarian removal men who came in ready to work. And we had one painting the banisters and another one building furniture. We got it done in a week and then we got the

the staff in. So that morning they came in and we were signing their agreements and checking them in. We left and Simon said, what do we do now? I was like brunch. We’re now going for brunch. So Simon was in the business. Then we found our amazing team member David who we finally booked a holiday after two years, went to Egypt and I knew him through property anyway and he was really keen. I said, can you be my master key holder for a week? And he did the most incredible job for us, just solved problems immediately.

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I was like, this is our guy. So he came on part-time, then he came on full-time, and then you’ve got all these subcontractors, haven’t you, like cleaners, gardeners, painters, decorators. So I think bit by bit is the key. Yeah, bit by bit. And your power team is so essential. I tell you, the bit is when we’re our businesses, our businesses are like our baby, aren’t they? And so to trust that in the hands of other people to be like, can I leave them for a week? Because even though I’m sure you had the absolute trust in David, I’m just thinking,

to myself, could you relax on holiday knowing that it was still with somebody else who you didn’t know at the time necessarily well, but you almost have just got to have that trust, don’t you, in order to leap forward? But most people are good people. Most people are great people. think you just have to let them. Let them do their job. Celia, what about yourself? So I think the first person that I sort of relied on really rather than me having it on as my team was

my broker. He became a bit of a coach for me, a of a mentor. He talked at that level and it was going right over my head and then gradually as time went by I suddenly realised some of it was going in. And yeah, was really, and still is, very important in my business. Obviously I don’t pay him directly as such but he’s part of my team and he’s really very important part of my team. As time’s gone on, I think when I first started I did the classic, I’m going to do all this myself.

because I’m going to save money, right? So I painted the entire house, I put the flooring down, I even built a shelf to put the washing machine and tumble dryer on. I mean, I was that clever and kind of like that, able to use power tools and things. And I got my hairdresser’s husband to come in and do all the electrics and the plumbing and all sorts of things like that. And of course, it took me way too long. And it was at that moment that I realized actually time is money. I could have rented that property out a lot earlier and be getting him getting him rent from

It was very soon after that that I got a really good builder, really good electrician and plumber and believe me I’ve gone through my plumbers. If anyone knows of a really good roofer in Liverpool that’s where I still need a really good roofer. I’ve kind of accumulated various people along the way and picked them up and you know some people let you down and some people you just have to kind of go actually that’s not the way we do things and move on. So then the very first person I’ve actually paid for is a

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I found her because I went for lunch with another property investor friend and she was telling me how brilliant her VA was and then she said, and I’ve trained her on Coho and I was just like, oh my gosh, I need this woman, I need her. So I had a little conversation with her and she knows all about how to use Coho. She communicates with my tenants. In fact, was at the Girls and Property Retreat a few months ago, I was chatting to Sophie on WhatsApp.

came through on my phone and it was from one of my tenants and it was a half past eight on a Friday evening and the message read, I’ve broken my earring do you know of somebody who could fix it? I was just like that is ridiculous that’s a tenant expecting me to solve this problem and I think Sophie at the moment said get yourself somebody who can come and help and so that’s yeah she did and that’s and that’s where we’ve got now so we’ve got amazing VA and she helps me out in all those admin roles.

and the communication between me and my tenants as well. Yeah, definitely. It seems to be that like Admin is kind of the first thing to be taken off so that we can go and do the business development side of things. That tends to be the best way. Do we have any roofers from Liverpool in the room? Any roofers? No, we’re going to have to continue that search. If anyone knows a roofer, come see Celia. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that is so important. I tell you what, this has actually inspired me right in this moment to do a podcast episode all around staff.

in your business because I personally didn’t go straight for a Filipino VA. I’ve actually got a VA who’s UK based but through a connection and the differences between a Filipino VA and say a VA based in the UK I think is really interesting. So I think I’m gonna do a podcast about staffing. So this has really encouraged me to do that. Brilliant ladies, thank you so much. And then my third question is, I like this one, I want to hear what your girls are gonna think about this and the audience as well.

question. What systems or AI tools are you currently using to manage the daily operations of your HMO business? With increasing talk about AI potentially replacing roles, do you see it enhancing your team or possibly replacing parts of it? Who wants to go first? Who’s taking it? Come on.

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I’ll go first. so AI, I use it every day. Absolutely every day. I really do. So I’m also a coach as well. So I did some training with Rick Gannon. He’s hired me as one of his coaches now. So I support him with his mentees. And I do a lot of a lot of coaching calls. And then I have to sort of write notes and I don’t need to write notes anymore. So I use AI to help me with my note taking. And my gosh, and now when I’m having a meeting with from me and my business, I put the AI

companion on as well. And it is absolutely gold. It really is. It really supports me. Now, has that replaced anyone? No, it just means that I am now freed up to be able to do the things that I’m skilled at, I’m good at. You know, I don’t want to be sitting there making notes. That’s not my skill set. can now, as soon as the call’s finished, I can get on and do my business rather than having to spend hours writing notes. And then the same with other parts of AI. mean, for instance, I use ChatGPT all the time.

I’ve actually started to offload onto ChatGPT and I find I actually get the best results. So I kind of start by, I go, right, so this is what’s in my head, ChatGPT. Can you kind of make this make sense to me and to everyone else? And it works really, really well. The other thing I do is I actually put legal documents through ChatGPT as well, but that hasn’t replaced my solicitor. I still need my solicitor. I still need that person to be able to, you know, make sure that it’s absolutely legal and everything.

but it just helps me to understand it a bit better. It’s like an added tool that I use. It hasn’t replaced anything, it’s just now an extra tool that I use on my business. The one thing though that AI can’t do is it can’t take students to A &E when they’ve broken their collarbone. They still need me for that. It never stops, does it? No, never stops. It never stops, goodness. With ChatGPT, the thing that I do with the legal documents,

I ask it to point out all the fees involved in the documentation and then just list all the fees for me so I’ll never spot a missing fee because I’m just like just list the fees for me and then list all the pros of this list all the cons of this and I just ask it as if I’m speaking to a lawyer I still use the lawyer of course but you go in prepped to the conversation so I already know xyz what don’t I know. you know that you’re actually supposed to ask chat GPT if they’re hallucinating right because apparently sometimes it does make up stuff yeah it does so you actually after a little

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while of communicating with it you’re supposed to go are you hallucinating and it will go no I’m telling you the truth or it might go yeah actually I’ve made it up. Have a go at it and see what it says. Have ever heard of that? I’ve never heard Well have a go, let’s see. Well I asked chat GPT what it wanted to call me and everyone else got a lovely response saying Nova or whatever I got just call me chat GPT. I was like okay that’s fine. Kim what about you what AI software are you using? Yeah so I use chat GPT a lot I don’t tend to use it.

in systems in the business, but I lean on it a lot. In terms of tenant comms sometimes, we’re both student landlords, so sometimes you get tricky situations and it’s quite difficult to deal with over coho. I recently had two student tenants, they’d fallen out, so they’ve moved in as a group, they’re friends, it happens a lot with students, and they’d fallen out, but it had actually gotten quite nasty, they’d been in altercation, and we were just constantly getting comms from each party, you know, this has happened, that has

happened and I’m quite an emotional person so I just wanted to be like this is what you need to do and spoke to NRLA first about what we actually should be doing but ChatGBT helped me formulate the responses. Professional, not emotional like me, they were very sort of standard. I have noticed that a lot of the students also use it so we’re now getting everybody’s laughing so it’s not just me but yeah they send like a message and you can just tell it’s not them it’s so formal.

You can see those everywhere. It’s just too over the top for the student who you know to type that. So we get that a lot, so to help respond I use it a lot for that. I use it actually for reviewing documents, planning holidays, perplexity, AI, I like that, I think it’s a bit more user friendly. And as a lawyer I have to say for checking legal documents just be careful with chat GBT because it is out of date. Yes, sometimes it just gets things completely wrong, I asked it something.

and it was referring to what the position was in 2024 because it’s a bit, it’s got a lag. So yeah, as a lawyer I have to say that I knew you were going to say that. Don’t replace us with AI. I was waiting for you over there, definitely. And then Sophie, what about yourself? I think we’ve all found ways to bring it into our business. I don’t think I can replace my team with AI because I think the human element of HMOs is so important. Like I remember when me and my team talk about doing viewings, someone might come off good on paper but it’s that

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vibe checked, you know what I mean? Like if they seem a little bit creepy or a bit off, know, AI is not going to get that, that’s going to be the human bit. Okay, sorry, this room is reserved. And yeah, you have to be a human to deal with some of these problems, don’t you? They can become quite complex. And if someone’s behind on their rent, we don’t just start sending them reminders, we’ll speak to them, figure it out, figure out what their background is, can we help them? So yeah, I think humans will always be required. Yeah, it’s just finding the right balance, isn’t it? You’re totally right with what you said, they can be the

best talent on paper but then you meet them and you’re like just sensing a vibe here you know or even the other way they could be like the best person you’ve ever seen in front of you I’ve had this before and then I’m like well that went wrong didn’t it absolutely and just out curiosity because I think this is important for feedback and sharing does anyone else have a different piece of AI software that they actually use themselves that they want to share with with everyone to help or are we all the same in terms of chat GPT and what yes what do you use do you want to stand up so we can hear you

Which one? Fathom. Fathom? What’s fathom?

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Beautiful. Me too, me too. Absolutely, yeah exactly. What about HMO specific? Does anyone use AI, any AI tools for HMO specific things?

No, I guess, I don’t know if it’s AI, but Coho particularly is fantastic at it. We’ve all used Coho. It’s great in terms of rank collection, being able to put the tenancy agreements together, being able to then chase, et cetera, and get all the guarantees in. So Coho’s another good one for HMOs. One of the things that I’ve started to look at is asking Chats GPT what the commercial yield is in a certain area. But what I have noticed is that you do have to give it really good prompts. You can’t just say, what’s the commercial yield in?

you’ve got to really kind of be specific about what your properties you’re looking at, you’re comparing it to, what condition the property is. And I think it’s a little bit like when I was at school, one of the first things we learned was garbage in, garbage out. And it’s the same with chat GPT. If you put a really simple prompt in, you’re not going to get a good quality answer out. But I wouldn’t just trust it on its own. I would use it as another tool in my toolbox. So use that along with, I don’t know, your property data or your own personal resources.

research or other people’s valuations, you would use that as part of your own tools. that’s just another way of using it. Definitely. I think the one that I’ve used with ChatChimp is to get the article 4 restrictions quite a lot. I find sometimes it’s quite difficult to go through each of the council websites to find them. Whereas if you ask it, is this an article 4 area and you give very specific, it usually says yes or no and then you say map it out for me as it and then it actually will show you the boundaries as well. that’s worked a few times, not always, but it’s worked a few

times as well for finding article fours, which is really good. Perfect. I’ve loved these questions. Have these questions been helpful so far? all nodding. I see nods. That’s good. So I’ve got an exciting way to finish this panel because I always think to myself, what are the realities? What is it that people don’t talk about enough? I find that too many people nowadays stand on stage and kind of talk about all the good things that happening at the moment and standing in front of their Ferraris and saying, you can get rich quick in 90 days. And our mission is, that we want to kind of

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debunk that a bit and to show the realities and the life behind the HMO. So to finish off ladies, I would like to hear in true girls and property style a property disaster that you have either experienced recently or are going through right now that you’re happy to share with everybody. So, why don’t we start with you? Tell me about property disaster you’ve got. We’ve always got them going on. I think one of my favourite ones was the mystery of the cat poo bag. We had a tenant on

the ground floor let us know that bags of cat poo were being dropped outside the window and it was the tenant above who had a secret cat. So I had many questions for this. Secret cat, go. Secret cat, yeah. Why bag it, why throw it, why the secret cat? We had to talk to the other tenants. Who’s had a secret pet in their HMO? I’ve had a giant one!

Three dogs! Three dogs! Yeah. It’s just not the right place for an adult dog. It’s not, but they said actually, yeah, the cat was just staying over for the weekend. So the cat had to go. I love the fact that they thought it was just gone. Gone. Gone. Out the window. Bye. Back it and go. Brilliant. Love that. Celia, what about you? What’s your problem to start with? I’ve got one that’s another poo-related one. My latest refurb, we needed to put a gas potentially.

heating system in. All the pipe work was already there, but when they started pulling things apart, they realised that they needed to replace a big pipe that went right to the top of the property. So they started following this back and then they came across, behind a shower, they came across what they thought was splatters of plaster.

And as they pulled back up to the shower, they realized that the waste pipe had disconnected by three foot. And therefore the waste from about four of the rooms was coming down and then some of it was kind of going into the pipe below. So what was splatter of plaster was not. Do you know what it didn’t smell? think it must have just kind of, well the tenants hadn’t lived in it for a while. So I think that the smell had gone.

Speaker (33:20.932)

But yeah, we had to completely take the back of the shower off, reconnect it and yeah, it was a bit of crappy situation really. Literally. Why do we want to get into HMOs? Just all of this. Kim, what about yourself? So mine’s a group that we recruited late in the student year. So if you’ve got student HMOs, you’ll know there’s certain times of year best to have a HMO ready and ours just completely missed that due to planning.

and so we came out of the refurb at sort of September so I suppose, how do say it nicely, you get the different type of students to those that are looking and organised earlier in the year. So we took on this group, the house had previously been derelict, empty for years so it’d been a real problem for the neighbours, we’d come in, we’d said to the neighbours, we’re amazing landlords, you can have great tenants. We got this group in and they were just a nightmare, they completely trashed the property, we had one

one gentleman who was adamant he wanted the ground floor room which normally the ground floor rooms in my experience aren’t the desirable ones but he took the ground floor room it turned out he was like drug dealing out of the window so no I don’t know if it was in cat blue bags but so he was opening the window and people on a hide scooters were like going past stopping and carrying on but yeah you can imagine like that whole like eight months of the tenancy was just a nightmare the neighbours were calling us they were having parties and yeah the house

brand new HMO. Luckily post-valuation this all happened but yeah it was just one of those disaster tendencies. Do know I’m so interested in just people and like just people and psychology and consumer behaviour it’s like like where do they get the ideas from to be to like do these things. I drugstrops. Yeah but it’s quite I find it quite dare I say interesting I’d always want to sit down and be like talk me through your thought process of why you’re doing this.

and how. Fantastic girls, I’ve loved that and I’ve loved all the questions. I actually think what would be really great now if you’re happy to do it we’ve got a bit of time actually, is to hear from the floor as well because I think you’re all so brilliant and you’ve all got so much experience to offer and realness as well and so we’ve got time for maybe like let’s say two questions. Please don’t make it too specific because of course then you know we want to include everybody in the room, we don’t want to be asking about one specific deal or something but is there like a question that you’ve always thought

Speaker (35:50.532)

that you wanted to ask. Like who here already has like a HMO portfolio? Does everyone here have a HMO portfolio? Okay, who here is getting started in HMOs? So maybe let’s have one question from the people who have the portfolio and let’s have one question from the people starting out. So ladies starting out, start thinking about your question. So come on guys, we’re a room full of investors here. Let’s ask a question for these fabulous women. What do you want to know as a portfolio landlord? Yes, back, can you stand up please?

Speaker (36:32.042)

One of the issues is obviously the 12 month tendency being scrapped. student year runs actually from today, so July rather than September. So the risk of the void period is slightly lower for us than in some areas where, you know, September you’re going to have months and months of void. We’re just, we’re keeping calm and carrying on is my message at the moment. It’s not in place yet. There’s been a lot of proposals for changes by the House of Lords,

which will probably be overturned in the next few weeks. But we’ve let for the following year, for the next academic year, and we’re continuing until it’s law and we know what we’re dealing with. Because they’ve got this clause at the moment where if you’ve got 15 units, then you’re PBSA. And so you fall outside of the rules.

They’re trying to finalise, is that 15 units in one block? Is that 15 units as a landlord that makes you a professional landlord? There’s a lot up in the air, so I’m trying not to panic is my answer at the moment. Yeah, we’re getting calls a lot at the moment. We do direct vendor marketing and we’re getting a lot of landlords that want to sell up that are sort of towards the retirement age. And this is probably the tip of the iceberg for them. And so I see it as an opportunity, but it’s difficult at the moment when we don’t know what’s coming in.

I recorded a podcast episode on Monday that just went with somebody called Julie Ford, who’s actually a judge here today at the HMO Awards. She’s got over 30 years of experience and has literally worked with the NRLA and also knows everything there is to do about the Renters’ Rights Bill. She’s got over 30 years experience. I usually record my episodes and release five weeks later. I recorded it on Monday. It’s out on Monday, literally, because the information she gave on the podcast, I was sat there going, we need

to get this out as soon as possible. There are 264 pages of the Renters’ Rights Bill and there have been over 30 pages that have been added or amended as it were. So if you want to listen, I’m genuinely not plugging, I mean this, Julie Ford on the Girls and Property podcast, everybody can listen to it. You must listen if you’re in HMOs and listen to the Renters’ Rights episode going out Monday 7am because Julie is phenomenal with it. Thank you, Ryan. Good question. Yeah, hot topic, Renters’ Rights, definitely.

Speaker (38:54.018)

Right, ladies who are starting out in HMOs, I said I was going to come to you. Who wants to ask a question for these fabulous ladies?

Speaker (39:09.516)

Just keep going. Business is hard, lots of people fail. It’s the people that just keep plugging away that do it. In the Rent2Red model, it’s just sending those letters, speaking to those agents. I got so much rejection. It took three months to get those first properties on board and I could have just given up. So it’s just keep going, keep plugging away. Consistency wins, I think. Joanna, can I give you an example of this? Because I think that this might really help you and others in the room. I remember the day I sent help my letters and I remember getting

my first ever call from a HMO letter and I was so excited and I was sat there and I was like, my god this is working! And I picked up the phone all energetically and this…

Old woman literally screamed down the phone at me. My first ever call ever screamed down the phone at me because I’d sent a letter to her dead husband. My first ever one, guys, right? And so she said, you brought up bad memories for me. She said she was going to sue me. I don’t quite know how, but I remember just going, OK. And I got off the phone and I just completely broke down. And I thought to myself, I can’t do this. I’m not built for this. This isn’t part of who I am or my personality. And actually, what I ended up doing

was I called Sophie. I called Sophie and I said, so if I don’t think I can do this, I don’t think I’m built for this. Someone’s just called me up screaming down the phone with me and Sophie in her wonderful way just went, she’s like, that happens all the time. Welcome to property. And I went, okay. So I just carry on then. And Sophie was like, yep. And I was like, okay, bye. Put the phone down. So sometimes all you need is that person to tell you, just keep going. Like it’s okay to be rejected and shouted at. And I promise you the hardest one as a and who will agree with this? Who will agree?

Speaker (40:51.652)

agree that the hardest HMO they ever got was always their first one. Yeah, always. Because it’s your lessons, it’s the one that you learn with. But then when you get the next one, the next one, it just snowballs. So start and just know that you can then end up with cat poo if you wanted to. live your best life in a camper van. You know, live your best life as it were. But yeah, I think that’s it for Girls and Property today. Obviously, if you wanted to talk to any of the girls or talk to myself as well, or learn any more about Girls and Property, then do come.

and find us and hopefully we can all get in our shorts and t-shirts and off this very well lit stage. It’s very hot. But thank you so much for coming today and all of your energy and listening and let’s all connect and have the most wonderful day. So thank you so much.