With the recent surge in popularity in rent to rent and lease options it seems that more investors are turning single dwellings into HMO property. I appreciate the country needs more housing to accommodate a growing population but are we in danger of over supplying a particular type of housing in HMO property and if the HMO market is teetering on an oversupply what do investors need to do to ensure that their investment generates the returns they originally calculated.The UK has a retail property investment market like no other in Europe. There are now many hundreds of thousands of buy to let investors in the UK, and until late 2007, we had banks seemingly throwing money at borrowers not only to purchase the property but also to renovate with investors, in some cases, putting none of their own money into these deals. Markets have short memories and some say similar times are not too far away.

We also have a property investment education market quite like nowhere else in Europe with many property training companies offering everything from one day courses in property investment to 12 month intense courses which explore all the different types of investing strategies. Currently there is nowhere to learn these strategies apart from the training companies. With the recent development and new interest of institutional investment within the residential sector, particularly with the interest in Build to Let I believe the residential sector will become more of a prominent fixture on the university curriculum. I occasionally guest lecturer at John Moores University Liverpool and I was recently amazed how small a part the residential sector plays in an overall property degree. This will change in the coming years I have no doubt.

In todays market there is very little capital growth about unless you are investing in London or the South East region however with recent government intervention this looks set to change, however over the past few years many investors have been chasing cashflow within their portfolio. Learning about new HMO strategies while maximizing rents and net cashflows has got the juices flowing of the buy to let investor.

Added to this the more recent advanced strategies such as rent to rent, where you agree to rent a property from an existing landlord and then rent it on a multi room basis, alongside lease options has led to more and more investors, often with very little financial reserves converting single occupancy dwellings into HMOs in the hope they can quit the day job. The net effect is that we now have thousands more rooms available to rent than we had a few years ago but not necessarily with a correlating increase in that type of tenant.