Property Management Nightmare on Professional HMOs & Blocks of Flats

Too many do not realise that proper property management either brings success or failure. Without proper tenant screening you might end up with the Tenant from Hell or beyond!

I have a colleague who did not do background checks or speak to the prior landlord.

They had a particular tenant who were constantly complaining about repairs, and once the repairs were scheduled and completed, they were never done to their satisfaction. They would get daily phone calls about certain repairs at that property.

They were just running around like headless chickens trying to satisfy this one tenant, making sure they didn’t have any more repair requests—even though many of them were imaginary and a lot of them weren’t realistic.

This tenant clearly wanted to go out of her way to make their lives miserable. I honestly think it was personal, and there was some sort of jealousy of them, or his wife.

So how do you resolve this or at least attempt to. Some basic concepts…Firstly in order to focus our time we put a majority of our time and money into Social HMOs that are 5 year leases which in Dec of this year will be 10 years…There are no voids…no management…no maintenance…just a BACS payment monthly like clock work.

However and a very big However, most banks will not lend on these. That is why we do blocks of flats or Professional HMOs in which we sell on in order to keep more Social HMOs. However we manage these Professional HMOs and blocks and in order to avoid issues & problem tenants we use basic concepts.

  1. We do background checks…along with criminal checks. We look to use UKTenantData

2. This might sound crazy, but there are some landlords who do not have a proper AST. Make sure everything is detailed.

3. Check job references….and look at pay stubs ( We actually had one photo shopped & and the potential tenant was just fired).

4. If you are in the tail end of refurbishing and the tenant wants to move in…wait till the job is completed

5. Be wary of tenants that want to move in ASAP.

I am sure others in the HMO property group can add to this…but the key is always screen for tenants. It is better to have a property empty than a night mare tenant.