As few as 22% of HMOs have a usable garden
With the summer here and the weather well and truly hotting up, new insight from COHO, the HMO management platform, reveals where in England you’ve got the best chance of finding a shared house with a usable garden. And just for good measure, they’ve also worked out where the most pet friendly and car friendly HMOs are as well.
June sunshine is beating down and England is getting hot, hot, hot, which means many of us are going to be spending a lot of time in the garden over the coming weeks and months.
But COHO’s analysis of live house share listings* reveals that if you’re thinking of moving into an HMO this summer, your chances of finding one with a usable garden differ greatly depending on which region of the country you’re in.
Across England, less than half (48.9%) of available house share rooms are in properties that have a usable garden, and in some regions, such as the North East (22.3%), North West (30.3%), East Midlands (36.7%), and Yorkshire & Humber (44.4%), the odds of being able to snag yourself some quality sunbathing space are even slimmer still.
But elsewhere in the country, things look much sunnier.
In the East of England, 67% of current room listings are in properties that have a usable garden, making it the nation’s HMO garden hot spot.
Gardens are also in good supply in the South West (65.4%), South East (63.7%), and West Midlands (53.2%), while even in the densely populated capital city of London, more than half (51.9%) of listings are in usable garden properties.
Additional considerations
COHO knows that, even when the sun is baking down, it’s not just garden access that people care about when searching for a quality shared house to move into, another common consideration is parking space.
Unfortunately, only 46.5% of England’s current shared house room listings come with private parking included. Even in the most car friendly HMO region of the South West, only 56.8% of listings have parking space.
And it gets even tougher if you’ve got a furry friend, because COHO has found that a measly 2.5% of England’s available house share opportunities are listed as pet friendly. You might be surprised to learn that the nation’s most pet friendly HMO market is London, but even here your dog or cat companions will only be welcome in 4.3% of listings.
For those who are looking for an HMO advertised as ‘bills included’, the outlook is far brighter. 66.6% of England’s house share listings come with bills included, rising to a high of 77.2% in the North West, and not falling below 62% anywhere in the country.
COHO Founder and CEO, Vann Vogstad, commented:
“It goes without saying that, given the choice, the vast majority of us would choose a home with a usable garden rather than one without. It’s not that we’re all got a passion for horticulture, it’s just nice to know that, when the weather allows, we’ve got a little patch in which to enjoy some fresh air, even more humbly still, somewhere to hang our washing out.
Given that 88% of homes in England have a garden, it seems unfair that when it comes to HMO, the proportion of usable garden properties falls as low as 22% in some areas. While there are a lot of factors to take in, I think it’s fair to say that housemates deserve better, and that there’s no overriding reason for so few HMOs providing their tenants with outdoor space.
However, I’m optimistic that this will change over the coming years. The standard of HMOs is rapidly increasing, driven by rising tenant expectations and the co-living revolution which is pushing standards up and seeing a new era of shared houses that give far more consideration to the housemate experience.”
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