HMO Properties are a vital part of British housing

October 2, 2026

HMO properties have become an easy target for social media outrage. Spend enough time online and you will eventually come across somebody filming a shared house, pointing a camera through a window or making sweeping claims about who lives there and why. A noticeable amount of this content comes from far-right social media accounts and self-appointed online vigilantes, particularly around immigration and asylum accommodation, and the claims being made are often unsupported by any real evidence.

No matter what the far right tries to churn out online, an HMO is not automatically an asylum property, a migrant property or some form of government-funded temporary accommodation. An HMO is simply a type of housing, usually involving people from more than one household sharing a property.

HMO properties serve an important purpose within British housing. They give people another housing option between living at home and taking on the full cost of renting an entire flat or house, something which has become increasingly expensive across large parts of the country.

At Foot Forward Property Investments, we have developed more than 450 HMO properties and our management operation now looks after more than 600 tenants every month. We develop professional HMOs across Yorkshire, particularly South Yorkshire, and our properties are designed around something very simple: providing good-quality, affordable accommodation for people who live and work locally.

HMOs were not invented to house migrants

There is another claim that needs putting to bed: HMO properties are not some new form of housing created by the British Government to accommodate migrants or asylum seekers.

HMOs have existed in Britain for decades.

The term itself was already established in legislation by the late 1960s. In a House of Commons debate in 1987, MPs specifically noted that the term “houses in multiple occupation” derived from the Housing Act 1969. Parliament was debating regulation of this type of housing in detail throughout the 1980s, including bedsits, shared accommodation, hostels and lodging houses.

By 1991, official figures recorded around 760,000 HMO buildings across England, covering traditional bedsits, shared houses and flats, households with lodgers, purpose-built HMOs and converted flats. Shared houses alone accounted for around 220,000 buildings at that point.

So the idea that HMOs suddenly appeared because of modern asylum policy is historically wrong.

Shared housing has been part of British life for generations. Before today’s terminology became common, people lived in bedsits, lodging houses, boarding houses and shared houses for many of exactly the same reasons they choose HMOs today: affordability, work, independence, relocation and simply not wanting or needing to rent an entire property.

The regulatory framework has changed considerably over time. Mandatory licensing for larger HMOs arrived in 2006 and was expanded in England in 2018, but the properties themselves existed long before those licensing regimes were introduced.

It is perfectly possible for asylum accommodation providers to use an HMO today. That does not make HMOs an invention of asylum policy any more than the use of hotels for asylum accommodation means the Government invented hotels for migrants.

Who actually lives in HMO properties?

One of the more ridiculous claims regularly circulated online is that HMO properties are somehow synonymous with housing unvetted male asylum seekers.

They are not.

Our own HMO properties are developed specifically for professional tenants. Over the years, the people living within the HMOs we develop and manage have included NHS workers, police employees, ambulance staff, logistics workers, contractors, scientists, council workers and people employed across many of Yorkshire’s major industries.

We do not develop or manage HMOs for asylum accommodation or government temporary-housing contracts.

The far-right social media narrative often removes all of that context. Several unrelated adults living in the same building suddenly becomes “evidence” of something sinister, usually without anybody involved having the slightest idea who the tenants actually are.

A photograph of a house is not evidence. Seeing several men entering the same property is not evidence. Looking an address up online and discovering that it is an HMO is certainly not evidence that the occupants are asylum seekers.

Not everybody wants to rent an entire house

There are plenty of completely ordinary reasons why somebody chooses an HMO room.

A young person moving out of their parents’ home for the first time may not want, or be able, to take on the rent, council tax, gas, electricity, water, broadband, furniture and maintenance costs associated with an entire house.

Someone relocating to Doncaster for a new job might need somewhere furnished and ready to live in without immediately committing to a full property.

Someone coming out of a relationship might want good-quality accommodation without taking on a large tenancy. Other people simply do not want to live alone and prefer having other people around while retaining their own private bedroom and bathroom.

A professionally managed HMO can suit all of those people. The tenant gets their own bedroom, and in the properties we develop, their own private ensuite, alongside shared communal facilities. Bills can be incorporated within the rent and the property is professionally managed.

That is the real world of HMO accommodation. It is considerably less exciting than the conspiracy theories, but considerably more accurate.

High-quality HMOs are nothing like the stereotype

We completely understand why badly managed HMOs attract criticism. Poor landlords, overcrowding, unsafe buildings and dreadful living conditions should not be defended simply because a property happens to be an HMO.

We have spent more than three decades arguing for higher standards.

The sector needs good landlords, proper enforcement and well-maintained properties. Poorly operated houses damage neighbourhoods, tenants and the reputation of every responsible HMO operator.

Our developments are deliberately built substantially above what somebody might associate with the stereotypical cheap shared house. We predominantly develop five and six-bedroom professional HMOs with private ensuites, properly sized bedrooms, substantial communal areas, quality kitchens, gardens or outdoor space and, wherever possible, off-street parking.

Properties generally undergo substantial refurbishment rather than a quick coat of paint and some furniture being thrown inside. Works can include new plumbing, rewiring, heating systems, insulation, plastering, windows, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, fire protection, emergency lighting, soundproofing, roofing works and extensions.

We build properties that we would be comfortable owning ourselves. In many cases, we do.

HMOs are a highly regulated form of housing

The online portrayal of HMOs as some sort of unregulated Wild West is equally detached from reality.

Mandatory licensing for larger HMOs came into force in 2006 and was expanded in England in 2018 so that properties with five or more occupiers living in two or more households can fall within mandatory licensing regardless of the number of storeys.

Licensing is only part of it.

HMO landlords face requirements around property condition, management and safety. Councils have enforcement powers, while planning controls can also apply in areas where local authorities have introduced restrictions on new HMOs. Parliament has been legislating around the standards and management of multiple occupation for decades, not merely since the recent political arguments over migration.

Depending on the property and local authority, operators may also be dealing with minimum room sizes, amenity requirements, licence conditions, fire precautions, electrical standards and ongoing inspections.

This is why lumping every HMO together as a “slum house” demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of the sector.

There are poor HMOs. There are also poor hotels, poor apartment blocks, poor rented houses and badly maintained owner-occupied properties. The existence of bad examples does not define an entire form of housing.

Far-right social media speculation can affect real people

This is the part of the debate that concerns us most.

Some far-right social media accounts and self-described vigilantes increasingly appear willing to identify ordinary residential properties online and speculate about who lives inside them. Immigration and asylum policy are legitimate political subjects. Turning up outside someone’s home and making assumptions about private tenants based on their sex, appearance or the type of building they occupy is something completely different.

That becomes particularly concerning when people begin treating the letters “HMO” as proof that a building must contain asylum seekers.

It does not.

The property somebody is filming could simply house a warehouse supervisor, an NHS employee, a railway contractor and someone who has just moved out of their parents’ house.

Tenants should be able to go home without somebody on social media deciding that living in an HMO makes them suspicious.

We have housed working people across South Yorkshire for more than 34 years. They are tenants. They deserve exactly the same privacy and respect as somebody renting a one-bedroom flat or a three-bedroom house.

Affordable housing does not mean poor housing

The cost of renting independently is not limited to the headline monthly rent.

There is council tax, gas and electricity, water, broadband, furniture and all the other costs associated with running a household. For one person, paying for an entire property can be unnecessarily expensive.

A properly designed HMO shares some of those costs while still giving the tenant private space.

Our approach has always been to make accommodation affordable without making it cheap in quality.

We do not believe HMO landlords should chase the absolute maximum rent that a spreadsheet suggests. Neither do we believe investors should cram the largest possible number of bedrooms into a property simply because they can.

Our professional HMOs are designed around the people who will actually live inside them.

HMO investors have responsibilities too

There is an important message here for investors.

Buying the cheapest house you can find, cramming bedrooms into it and expecting tenants to accept whatever standard of accommodation you provide is not a sustainable HMO investment strategy.

There is a growing tendency for inexperienced investors to chase extremely cheap HMO properties because an online deal packager has produced a spreadsheet showing an enormous gross yield.

Tenant demand matters. Affordability matters. Bedroom sizes, parking, gardens, communal space and management all matter.

After developing more than 450 HMOs, we have repeatedly seen that tenants have choices. Give somebody a good-sized room, their own ensuite, sensible communal space, somewhere to park, outdoor space and an affordable rent, then manage the property properly, and you have created something people actually want to live in.

That is why we focus on professional HMO accommodation across South Yorkshire rather than student HMOs, temporary housing or government accommodation contracts.

We only manage the HMOs we develop ourselves, which means responsibility does not disappear once refurbishment finishes.

Britain needs good HMO properties

We have no interest in defending rogue landlords simply because they happen to operate within our industry.

If somebody owns an HMO and cannot be bothered maintaining it, responding to tenants, meeting safety standards or complying with their legal responsibilities, they should expect councils and regulators to take action.

What we will defend is the purpose of good-quality HMO housing.

No matter how many videos the far right posts, how many rumours get repeated or how many people decide that every shared house containing several men must secretly be asylum accommodation, the history and purpose of HMOs do not suddenly change.

HMOs were not invented for migrants. They were not created as part of a recent government asylum policy. Shared and multiple-occupancy housing has existed across Britain for decades, with the term itself appearing in legislation going back to the 1960s and Parliamentary debates about its regulation taking place long before today’s arguments around asylum accommodation.

HMOs house ordinary people.

They house people starting their careers. They house people relocating for work. They house people who cannot justify the enormous cost of renting an entire property. They house people going through changes in their personal lives, and people who simply prefer living with other people rather than sitting alone in a flat every evening.

For more than 34 years, we have watched shared accommodation provide homes for people living and working across Doncaster and the wider South Yorkshire region.

HMO properties have a very real purpose in British housing.

The answer to badly managed HMOs is better management, better properties and proper enforcement. It is not demonising an entire form of housing, nor is it allowing far-right social media speculation to rewrite the history of a housing model that has existed in Britain for generations.

Built properly, licensed correctly and managed responsibly, HMO properties remain a vital part of British housing.