Living next to a HMO

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Property next door is being worked on. I suspect three separate rooms for a HMO. There has been no notice or information given. Is this correct?

Does anyone live next to a hmo? Any advice?

Its doesn't need a licence if its only 3 people. Might be decent people you get in there. Wait and see.

I live next to one. It's no different from the bedsit I lived in when I was in my 20s. No problems at all -just various young people going in and out

DS rents a room in an HMO, he's a software engineer apprentice.

It does if they are three separate households - in Scotland at least.

Where I live though, most HMOs are completely fine - people, often students, house sharing because life is expensive.

Doesn't need a licence for 3 people in England

I don’t think I’d be to worried about 3 bedrooms.

My friend's mum lives next to a HMO and she says they are no bother at all. All of them work a lot so not even in most of the time.

I lived next door to one over 30 years ago and it was absolutely fine. All professional people who caused no problems.

However there is one in the next street to me that is rented to the council, has very transient tenants and the police are frequently called due to anti-social behaviour. In fact it was raided just a fortnight ago.

I think it's the luck of the draw.

PPs are right, you just can't tell. I have lived next to them and noticed nothing. A friend lived next door to one that it drove her to move house.

It depends on the owner/landlord. Some just don't care if their tenants are anti-social or not.

Depends on the tenants.

My son lives in a HMO over four floors with a total of 15 people in it. They're all young professionals, all working full time, and they barely see/hear each other as they're all getting up and returning home at different times and doing their own things at weekends (most going to their family homes!). They've not had a single party as basically, they're 15 strangers just living in the same place as they can't afford anything else (London!), certainly not their own flats, not even to rent!

But that's very different to a HMO occupied by transients or people placed there by the authorities due to any number of "difficulties" such as drug addiction, newly released prisoners, etc., where there may be fights, police raids, fires being started etc.

Likewise very different to a HMO in a university town occupied by a group of 2nd or 3rd year students who all know each other, chose to live together, and partying 2 or 3 nights per week!

To an extent it's luck of draw, but that's also determined by the type of house, location, etc. Cheaper run down properties in poor areas may be more likely to be housing "problem" tenants compared with a large house on a "nice" street within the M25 that'd be more likely occupied by City workers compared with a bog standard semi in a University town more likely occupied by students.

Three unrelated people living in a house and sharing facilities is a hmo in England.
A family of 2, 3, 4, 5... is not.

I didn't say it wasn't a hmo. I said it didn't need a licence for 3 people.

Not universally true - different areas have different limits.

But OP didn't mention licence. Just hmo. So I assumed you meant a hmo licence which seems reasonable.

Many Councils are also restricting the conversion of houses into HMOs without planning permission. If more than 6 non-related people, PP will be required.
But if you Google Article 4 HMO 'local council name' for your area you should be able to see whether there are tighter restrictions in your area.

Thank you all, my neighbours and I do not get on and turning their empty property into a hmo seems like a revenge move when we like the peace and quiet of our home. Fingers crossed the tenants are okay 👍

House next door to me was one. There were 5 adults in it. It was very quiet, no problems at all.
It was sold last year to a local GP and we've had constant out-of -permitted-hours building work since, and both front and back garden are piled high with rubbish, some builders, some personal.

I'd have the HMO back any day.

I have an HMO next door and it’s fine, the people are lovely - unlike my neighbours on the other side who are a family of screaming lunatics.

The initials just stand for House in Multiple Occupation. Meaning that the people living there are not legally considered one "household" - because they're not related to each other or in relationships with each other - however much they share space/money/ food etc.
The rules vary from place to place so you'd have to check to see if 3 tenants is enough for it to need an HMO licence in your area. There are extra rules which landlords are supposed to follow if they rent a place as an HMO rather than to a single household, and some minimum standards that they're supposed to meet (eg about the size of the rooms).
In my experience, single-household families are often more anti-social/ inconsiderate neighbours than HMO tenants. And people who 'own' their homes are often more annoying than tenants... so please don't assume that an HMO is a bad thing.

Live in a semi-detached and next door has been converted to 4 or 5 bedsits, long before we were here.

We rarely hear anything at all. Maybe a few times per year someone watching a movie or listening to music on the other side of the wall. As others have said, they tend to be single people, working. Never in the garden. Guaranteed they hear more family noise coming from our side!

I live in a HMO.

Four rooms: One person works for MoD. One is a paralegal in the entertainment industry. One is a final year medical student. One is a retired teacher. Three are UK citizens, two of whom have dual nationality (Irish/UK and Malaysian/UK). One is South Korean.
We are quieter than a household with children, keep reasonable hours, don’t have pets, and are actively involved with the local tenants and residents association.

So what, exactly, is the problem with having an HMO next door? Or are you just defaulting to prejudice?

No one decides to rennovate and turn their house into a HMO for revenge, don't be silly.

I lived in a street for 5 years with around 10 of them in very close proximity albeit not next door. For the most part, absolutely fine. There were more issues with a couple of horrendous families and a drugs house in the smaller privately rented properties.

We have three of them on my road and I can't say there any trouble at all. All young professionals judging by the cars parked on the drive outside. The three houses are all next to each other owned by the same person/business with communal landscape garden areas, bike storage, washing lines, BBQs etc The drive out the front is really big so all of the cars fit on it and are not on the road. It has everything that they would need and as residents on the rest of the road we rarely see any of them.

We lived next to an HMO. For a few years it was mostly fine with the odd drug dealer or severely mentally unwell tenant amongst the more quiet and law abiding lot.
Then it as sold to a landlord who did not give a fuck about who he put in there. We have been through hell and finally sold up a month ago.