Buying a HMO in Kensington

louise31_2

hi there,

we are thinking of putting in an offer on a house that at the moment has HMO status. We are told by the estate agent that it would be difficult to get the status changed back to a "normal" house. We plan to move into it ourselves ( single family ) and convert it back to a house. I don't have any more facts at the moment and haven't done any research on HMO's yet but surely this shouldn't be too difficult. Obviously we'll have to wait for all the tenants' leases to expire etc and won't /can't just kick people out.
My question: has anyone done this before in K&C?

Thanks

red40

Before even going into the wonderful world of HMO's, which I suspect you dont want to do?

You should speak to the planning officer, even before you put in an offer and ask them specifically how easy is it to get 'change of use' from multi occ to single use. Some councils are very much against a change of use of these types of buildings.

theGrinch

What is and isnt a HMO and what can be converted back to a "normal" residential property varies from council to council and depends on a variety of factors and who you know.

In 2006, whilst dealing with a case, I was told kensington and chelsea (RBKC) had the highest concentration of HMO properties. At the time the only way to take a property out of HMO status was to take a donor building (a residential building/hotel, in the same area) and change that into HMO. They were very strict about it.

I work for clients that buy and sell london property and these questions arise regularly. Recently, I had a case of a council verbally and surprisingly permitting a change of use from HMO to residential without a donor building. This was a particular area, where the council wanted more residential properties in keeping with the area.

You need to speak to planners at RBKC and also get what is known as their UDP (online). This is the unitary development policy broken down into wards. As I said, councils control this locally and policies do change, but do not think you can change it "no problem", its never that easy.

louise31_2

thank you both! That's so much more information than I had an hour ago.Will get more detail and let you know what happens.