Photo by Elite Dwellings

Adopting systems and processes and putting structure in place are key parts of starting and scaling a HMO business, so it’s important to set time aside early on to figure out how to best systemise your investment venture.

When I bought my first HMO, it was chaotic because I didn’t have any structure in place. Several years on from that, we grew quickly, and it came to a point where we had to implement structure and processes within the business. 

If we didn’t, we were going to burn through a lot of cash… Now we talk about structure on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to ensure the business keeps moving forward, and this allows us to keep growing.

Systems and processes have allowed me to grow my property portfolios successfully and sustainably and even helped engineer myself out of my investment and management business. Here we’ll talk about the areas to systemise within your HMO business, the benefits of doing this and tips for how to get started!

Areas to Systemise in Your HMO Business

It’s important to not get lost just managing your properties and its tenants… You need to ensure that you are still working ON your business and not just IN your business! Many of the problems you might encounter when running a HMO business can often be resolved by having effective systems and processes in place.

But what does this mean and how do you do it? Systemising your business involves pulling all of the pieces together on how to deliver certain tasks and activities. Systems should be implemented into every facet of your HMO business, including:

• Property and tenant management activities, such as tenant move-ins and move-outs, inspections, maintenance, rent collection and tenant communication
• Dealing with prospective tenant enquiries, viewings and screening
• Building and nurturing relationships with investors, agents and other property professionals
• A range of business and admin tasks like answering phone calls and emails
• Keeping up with legislation and legal obligations and maintaining certificates and documentation needed for running a HMO property

The Importance of Systems & Processes 

With hundreds of different laws impacting the HMO industry (and there is more on the way!), there’s a lot to get right within your HMO business, so setting up systems can help you stay on top of everything. And it allows you and your staff to have processes to follow and provides accountability for yourself and others.

Adopting systems can help ensure tasks are completed consistently and to the right standard. Doing this will help you and your HMO business be more efficient, productive and profitable, so it will help you get jobs done quicker, freeing up more time for income-generating activities!

This also allows you to reinvest into your HMO business and provides a structure. While we of course want to build and scale our property portfolios and generate as much cash flow as possible, you need to invest in these areas in order to create a healthy, organised business and be able to grow effectively.

But overall, investing in systemising your portfolio will ultimately help you generate more income, drive better results and get more out of your properties and business in the long run. Because of that, it really is one of the key ways to help you build and scale your HMO business successfully and sustainably! 

7 Tips for Getting Started

To effectively start and scale your portfolio, it’s essential to spend time on putting systems in place that will allow you to be more efficient, productive and profitable. Here are some of my top tips to help you get started systemising your HMO business!

1. Write down tasks and create checklists.

Before you start letting out your HMO rooms, it’s helpful to have systems and processes written down in detail. It can also be beneficial to create a checklist to ensure you meet all of the required standards and have all the documentation you need to provide.

The process of ticking boxes and following systems isn’t the most glamorous side of operating a HMO business, but you have to accept it as part of your job as a HMO landlord! And you need to be able to do it effectively so you don’t miss anything.

Creating a checklist will help you with this and ensure you pull everything required together. This can allow you to build the necessary systems and processes to help you keep up with all of your legal obligations.

Then, you need to look at the other areas of your business that would benefit from systemising as well. What tasks and activities do you have to undertake regularly? What problems are you having, and could putting a system in place help with the tasks related to them? Analyse these areas and the tasks surrounding them to help you start creating systems and standard operating procedures.

It’s important to write these all done on paper, so you can stay on top of it all. It’ll take some time, and at this stage, it’s also helpful to think about what systems you should prioritise building.

2. Check if any changes need to be made.

Once you have your systems written down, spend some time assessing if there are any steps that you’re missing, if there are ways you can improve the processes or if there are any other parts of your business that should be systemised. 

This should be an evolutionary process, so you’ll need to assess this regularly to see if there are tweaks or improvements that would be beneficial to make. And if any new legislative changes come into effect, figure out how that impacts your HMO business and how you should update your systems accordingly.

3. Batch your processes.

There are also some strategies that allow you to achieve more within your HMO business while working less, which you can incorporate into your systems. As landlords and investors, we frequently repeat the same processes on a weekly basis. So, if you batch certain bits of work together, then you can get much more out of the time that you deploy into the activity. 

For example, you could set aside time to deal with all of the low-priority emails in your inbox at one time so that this isn’t taking up more time by doing them separately. Batching processes like this can help you spend much less time on these tasks, while getting more out of your effort! 

So, this is a great strategy to think about when building your systems. Think about what tasks and activities would be helpful to batch together.

4. Find areas to simplify, automate, delegate or eliminate.

Look at your HMO business and find areas that you can eliminate, simplify, automate and delegate. Start by looking at your processes, what results are being generated or what you expect to be generated from them and consider whether any part of those systems can be simplified or eliminated altogether.

Streamlining your processes can also allow you to get certain jobs done quicker. Once your processes are working, find ways to automate them. And lastly, look at what you can delegate to other people so that you can step away from certain processes and focus on higher priority activities.

5. Use resources to help you.

If you need any help with understanding how to improve the efficiencies and systems within your business, there are a plethora of resources out there. This is an area we cover within The HMO Roadmap and a topic that’s talked about over in The HMO Podcast.

And if you really want to level your investment strategy up, a mentorship with an experienced investor in the industry may be helpful. That was one of the best investments I ever made in my HMO business, which really allowed me to take the operation of my portfolio to the next level!

6. Build a roadmap.

With all of these areas we’re talking about, you can now start building a roadmap to systemising your entire business. You can’t do this all overnight, but make a plan to help you visualise what you’re trying to achieve and what you currently have in terms of limitations and resources. 

Then you can start creating a list of everything you need to do to get all of your systems up and running. You don’t need to have every single thing mapped out at this stage, but begin planning the first few steps and start putting this into action. 

Having as much as you can mapped out will help you take the leap and allow you to focus on the tasks you need to undertake to systemise your HMO business with actionable steps!

7. Consider hiring staff.

To grow beyond the first couple of years of your HMO business, hiring admin staff can be particularly helpful as they can then help you manage your properties and deal with all of the administrative work that needs to be done.

While hiring staff members won’t necessarily be immediately income-generating, it will allow you to start scaling your HMO business up. And most importantly, they can take certain tasks away from you as there are only so many hours in a day.

When you start hiring staff, make sure you clearly set out their roles, responsibilities and accountabilities from the beginning. And make sure you have a plan for how you will train them. Of course, having systems already in place will make this much easier to do!

8. Audit your HMO business.

You’ll also need to regularly audit your systems and staff to check that tasks and services are being carried out to the right standard. This ensures you’re getting the performance you need out of your HMO business, your staff and yourself. 

And this can also provide an opportunity to find where and how you and your staff can provide a better service, which can boost your property and tenant management offerings and even make tenants want to stay longer!

When auditing your business, ensure your staff understand the systems and rules and are following what you’ve trained them to do. After undertaking an audit, it’s also important to provide feedback on the results so that they know what they’re doing well and where they can make improvements.

Take Your Systems to the Next Level!

Understanding your HMO business and continuously working on it will help you achieve your long-term objectives quicker, whether you have a small or large portfolio. And it’s not just about understanding how your business operates, it’s also about regularly checking and testing that it operates to the standard you’re striving for.

As effective systems can allow you to grow and do more with your portfolio, it’s key to allowing you to scale up your business, while ensuring you still provide a top-notch service!

If you really want to level up your investment strategy and start, scale and systemise your HMO business, become a member of The HMO Roadmap, where you can access in-depth training lessons, case studies, spreadsheets and worksheets to help you every step of the way! 

Signing up for the premium plan also allows you to gain access to useful templates you can use in your own business. And if you have any questions about systemising your HMO business, join us over in The HMO Community, our free Facebook Group with more than 9,500 members!

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, 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!