Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO)

Special requirements apply to Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs), which place special responsibilities on landlords and agents. This section uses the name HMO differently from the council tax section.

Definition of an HMO

An HMO is defined in sections 254-259 of the Housing Act 2004. In simple terms, an HMO is a building, or part of a building, such as a flat, that:

• is occupied by more than one household and where the occupants share, lack, or must leave their front door to use an amenity such as a bathroom, toilet or cooking facilities
• is occupied by more than one household in a converted building where not all the flats are self-contained. 'Self-contained' means that all amenities such as kitchen, bathroom and WC are behind the entrance door to the flat
• is a converted block of self-contained flats but does not meet the requirements of the Building Regulations 1991 (or later building regulations if the conversion was after), and less than two-thirds of the flats are owner-occupied.

The households must occupy the building as their only or primary residence (remembering that tenants can have more than one main residence), and rent must be payable for at least one of the household's occupation of the property. It must also be their only use of the property, so a live-in carer would not create an HMO.

Household

Generally, a household is a family (including cohabiting and same-sex couples or other relationships, such as fostering, carers and domestic staff). The definition of a family also includes parent, grandparent, child, stepchild, grandchild, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, nephew, niece, cousin and 'a relationship of the half-blood shall be treated as a relationship of the whole blood'.

Each unrelated occupant sharing a property will be considered a single household.

Properties that two individuals share are exempt from the HMO definition, as are those with a resident landlord with no more than two lodgers.

A self-contained unit has a kitchen (or cooking area), bathroom and toilet for the exclusive use of the household living in the unit. If the occupiers lack, share, or need to leave the unit to gain access to any of these amenities, the unit is not self-contained.

A simple example of an HMO would be Janet, Jane and Jane's baby living in a property where Janet and Jane are just friends. Janet, Jane, and the baby would be an HMO because the three people are not all related. Jane and the baby may be related, but Janet is not related to either of them, so they are "not all related to each other". To complicate matters, if Janet and Jane were a couple (living together as married), that would not be an HMO because they would be one household related to each other, including the baby.

Property

The second part of the HMO definition is about the building itself, and there are effectively five situations or types to consider.

The first type is defined as "not a self-contained flat". It does not say what it is; it says what it is not. However, in practice, houses and bungalows will fall into this category. Typically with these, the whole building will become the HMO.

The second type is a self-contained flat. In this situation, typically, just the one flat becomes the HMO (think of Janet and Jane and the baby sharing an apartment). If there is another HMO flat in the same building, it is an individual HMO, and indeed it might even be owned by a different landlord.

Notice that all properties must fall into either type one or type two as they have to be either a self-contained flat or not a self-contained flat.

Type three is a converted building with some element of non-self-contained accommodation. For example, a house converted into four self-contained flats and four bedsits. This HMO would include both the flats and the bedsits into one HMO.

Type four is not so much a building type and a method by which the property might become an HMO. Suppose it fails the HMO tests above for "technical" reasons, such as not being the primary residence. In that case, the local authority can serve notice and make it an HMO, bringing it within HMO management regulations and potentially within HMO licensing.

The fifth type is a block converted into only self-contained flats, compared with type 3, and the conversion was not and still is not compliant with 191 building regulations, and less than two-thirds are owner-occupied—owner-occupied means occupied by someone with a lease length of at least 21 years.

The critical thing about the HMO type is it defines how much of the building needs managing according to the management regulations and the part of the building where you have to count the number of occupiers to look at any potential licensing requirements.