The Problem

Local Authorities UK-wide are facing huge challenges with the management and enforcement of HMO licensing, due to unscrupulous landlords evading the licensing process, avoiding paying fees and failing to observe their regulatory obligations.

Estimates vary wildly, but it is widely acknowledged that a significant proportion of HMOs are unlicensed, with Housing teams struggling to identify and target the right properties for investigation and licensing enforcement, often due to limited resources, systems and information.

This leads to potentially very significant lost HMO licensing revenues and leaves tenants at risk of unfair treatment, while living in potentially unsafe and/or unhealthy conditions in non-compliant properties.

The Solution

To meet this challenge, WhenFresh firstly identifies the Private Rental Sector (PRS) properties within any Local Authority’s jurisdiction.

HMO Discovery then uses a scorecard developed using a wide range of proprietary WhenFresh property assets – supported with inputs from data partners such as Equifax, Zoopla, Royal Mail & Land Registry – to rank each rental property for its likelihood to be HMO. This process delivers a highly predictive candidate list of properties likely to be HMO, for cross-referencing against the Local Authority’s existing licensing records.

The net candidate file of properties can then be targeted for priority investigation to uncover rogue landlords, levy fines, recover lost revenues and secure future licensing & compliance.

How the WhenFresh HMO Discovery solution works:

Examples of Property Occupancy Types & HMO Candidate Volumes

WhenFresh has already analysed the properties in each UK Local Authority’s jurisdiction to break down the housing occupancy types, then used the HMO Discovery solution scorecard to identify and rank the potential HMO candidate volumes for each.  Below are 3 examples:

Comprehensive Property Insights:

As part of the HMO Discovery process, in addition to identifying potential HMOs for priority investigation, WhenFresh also delivers comprehensive insights into each of the properties within any Local Authority jurisdiction, including:

Property Occupancy Types

The data delivery includes a full breakdown of all properties within the Local Authority’s jurisdiction by occupancy type, i.e.:

> Private Owner-Occupied
> Social Housing
> Private Rental etc…

Property Types & Attributes

For each property, details of the property type (i.e. terraced house, detached house, flat, maisonette, bungalow, etc…) and key attributes (i.e. number of bedrooms, bathrooms, reception rooms, etc…) is also supplied.

EPC Ratings

The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating is also supplied for each property, with certification dates, current & potential ratings – all of which is key to current and future HMO licensing and management of the wider rental market.

Learn More…

Initial pilot projects with WhenFresh’s existing Local Authority clients have shown 90% accuracy in uncovering unlicensed HMOs –  based on investigation of the high priority candidate properties.  The solution is easy to test and implement, with no technical integration required and a high potential ROI.

To find out more and to claim your free breakdown of the volumes of high, mid and low priority HMO candidates within your jurisdiction, please contact Paul Rout on 020 7993 5818 or use the Contact Form.