Photo by MW Property Investors
Are you doing everything you can to make sure that you’re keeping utility costs down this winter? With high energy costs, this is more important than ever to do in your HMO properties!
Read below or listen to the full episode on The HMO Podcast for some tips on what you can do as a HMO landlord to bring energy bills down, guidance to share with your tenants to encourage them to be more economical, and how to effectively manage your property and tenants overall.
These are all simple solutions that can save you hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds on your utility bills!
9 Things HMO Landlords Can Do to Bring Utility Bills Down
Here are nine things you can do straight away as a HMO landlord to help bring down utility bills in your HMO properties!
1. Get Your Boilers Serviced
Ideally, you should get your boiler serviced in the autumn every year, but if you haven’t gotten it serviced recently, it may be worth getting that done. This will help ensure it’s operating as efficiently as possible.
And throughout the year, top up the pressure and manage and maintain the status of the boiler. This is really important and can make a big difference on the efficiency of your boiler.
2. Install Smart Thermostats
Put smart thermostats, like an Inspire or Hive system, into your HMOs. These connect wirelessly to the boiler and manage and monitor the temperature in the house. You can set programs for the heating to come on and off at certain times of day or days of the week.
Tenants can still hit boost if it gets particularly cold. And you can also set other parameters so that the boiler does certain things depending on the conditions and temperature. If you’re offering a bills-inclusive package, this is an absolute necessity.
While it can cost a few hundred quid to buy the thermostat and get it fitted by an electrician, these can save you more on your energy bills in the first year than what you’ll spend on the device and installation.
3. Get Your Tenants Smart Meters
A smart meter connects to the gas and electricity meters in your property and gives tenants a real-time display of their energy usage. This is tangible and can make them more aware of what their usage is, whether they’re being economical and if they’re using more or less energy than the average household.
Smart meters are sometimes available for free from your energy provider. They don’t cost much, so either way, set them up for your tenants. Put them somewhere where they can easily see it, and make sure they’re aware of it.
4. Insulate Hot Water Tanks and Pipes
It’s incredibly cheap and easy to insult the hot water tank and any pipes that you can. For an average household, this can save about £70 per year. If you have a big system, the savings can be even higher.
5. Draft Proof Windows & Doors
Draft proofing your HMO can save about £125 every year. It’s well worth doing because it doesn’t cost that much to do.
Additionally, if there is a draft coming through in your HMO properties, tenants are more aware than ever of this. They’ll likely tell you straight away that it’s an issue, so you might as well head on and take care of it.
6. Fit Radiator Reflector Panels
If you don’t know what these are, research them and consider adding them to your HMOs as it’s another effective way to save on energy bills.
7. Switch to LED Lights
Swap all of the lights in your HMOs to LEDs and install sensors where you can in communal areas. These can save you a huge amount of money. Of course, there’s some cost and investment into them in the first place, but it’s well worth doing.
8. Change Shower Heads
A low-flow shower head will still provide a really good shower to tenants, but some of them can use up to 60-70% less water. This is a great solution to reduce water consumption in your HMO properties.
9. Check for Leaky Loos
A leaky loo can cost you huge amounts. It’s something that can go unnoticed for ages. So, check for this during inspections. There are also devices you can put on the back of the toilet that will help you identify whether or not a toilet is leaking.
Guidance to Share with Your Tenants on Being More Economical
Here’s some guidance to share with your HMO tenants on being more economical. If they’re not, this could cause their rents to increase in the future.
It’s your responsibility to make sure your tenants understand this, and you’ll likely need to remind them and reinforce this advice. Some of this may be tough, but if you explain this to your tenants in the right way, you’ll likely be able to get some good results!
1. Turn off the Lights
The first thing you need to make sure your tenants are doing is turning off any lights when they’re not using them. This is a simple way your tenants can help you save a few quid a year.
2. Switch off Standby Modes
Tenants should also make sure wall plugs are turned off and that microwaves and other large appliances that don’t need to be on all the time aren’t just on standby. Leaving these sorts of appliances on can use up a lot of energy.
Getting tenants to turn these off can save you well over £100 per year, and it’s really easy to implement. Your tenants just need to remember and proactively want to do it.
3. Use Appliances Less
Ask your tenants to use the tumble drier, washing machine, and dishwasher less. They need to make sure the loads are full before they start them. If they do a lot of small loads, this can cost a huge amount of money with numerous tenants living in a house.
We need to get tenants used to the idea of washing together to actually help bring the cost of energy down. This alone can save you hundreds of pounds a year.
4. Wash at 30 Degrees or Less
None of us really needs to be washing any higher than that. This change in your HMO could save between £30 and £50 per year and potentially even more, and it’s so easy for your tenants to do.
5. Use Eco Balls in Tumble Driers
Eco balls help spread clothes out in the tumble dryer, so they’ll dry more quickly. It’s a really simple solution, and they don’t cost much. It’s not going to save you loads off the utility bills, but every little bit helps.
6. Take Shorter Showers
If your tenants can take four-minute showers, this could save over £100 per year or maybe even more in a large HMO. This is tricky as it’s difficult to enforce, but it’s about getting your tenants on board with it.
7. Don’t Overfill the Kettle
We can all be guilty of this, but not overfilling the kettle can save £40 to £50 per year in a small HMO. So, when your tenants are making one or two hot drinks, ask them to fill the kettle with only what they need.
8. Close the Curtains in the Evenings
This is a really simple solution for helping keep the heat in your HMO properties when it’s cold. Tenants will often not do this, but if you can get them to close the blinds and curtains earlier in the evenings by 5 or 6 pm, especially throughout the winter months, that can make a big difference.
9. Set the Fridge between 3 and 5 Degrees
Sometimes tenants will mess around with the fridge thermostat, but it really doesn’t need to be at 1 or 2 degrees. So, make sure it’s set between 3 and 5 degrees and that tenants understand why.
10. Periodically Defrost the Freezer
This helps freezers run more economically. It can be a bit of a faff to do, but if you can get your tenants to defrost them two or three times a year, then that could have quite an impact on the appliance’s efficiency.
11. Cook Together as a Household
Encourage tenants to cook together instead of all the housemates cooking separately. Help engineer this and provide the appropriate environment and incentives to make eating dinner together more enjoyable. It can also be helpful to suggest they use smaller pans and lids where possible.
3 Tips for Effectively Managing Your HMO Properties and Tenants
And finally, here are a few tips to help you effectively manage your properties and tenants overall!
1. Check You’re on the Best Tariffs
There really is a big difference in tariffs depending on the supplier, the information you give them, and how long you’re fixed in for. Continue to check if there are better tariffs out there, and fix it when you find the best one!
2. Get Monthly Meter Readings
This will help you manage your cash flow and provide useful feedback to your tenants about what their energy usage is and how economical they’re being. If your tenants are doing well, tell them that and thank them. And if they’re struggling, remind them of your guidance and why it’s so important to follow it.
If you’re managing students and have a fair usage cap in, this is an even more important process. You need to make sure that they’re aware that they need to change their behaviour immediately so there won’t be any disputes later on. And keep guarantors in the loop as well.
3. Cover Energy Consumption in Inspections
When inspecting your HMO properties and doing health checks, start going in with an interest in how efficient your tenants are with energy consumption. You should do this at the very least every quarter but ideally, every month.
Are tenants actually doing the sorts of things that can help reduce energy bills? Pick up on their behaviours and feed that back to them. This is where you can really reinforce the guidance and advice we’ve talked about!
Following this advice can help you set up a system and process for managing utility bills and create a multifaceted attitude toward energy efficiency in your HMOs! There are lots of opportunities to take proactive measures and remind or praise your tenants.
Doing these things effectively could save you thousands of pounds, particularly for a large HMO. And if you have a few HMOs, this can really start to add up!
If you have any questions about energy consumption in your HMOs, come on over to our Facebook Group The HMO Community. And if you want to level things up and take your HMO business to the next level, join The HMO Roadmap!
About the Author:
Andy Graham is the founder and the lead trainer at The HMO Roadmap! He is also the co-founder of The HMO Mastermind and Smart Property, a specialist HMO property investment and management company. He writes as a regular columnist in different magazines about a variety of HMO topics and is the host of The HMO Podcast! Follow Andy on Instagram!