I’ve been managing my HMO properties for over ten years now but this month during a session with my planning consultant I learnt a piece of information that will make a small but significant difference for our property ventures .

However, before we delve into the detail, let me introduce myself. Loyal readers may recognise me as one of the members of the editorial team for this magazine – and you’d be right. By trade I am a journalist and I am fortunate enough to regularly interview some successful people in property professions to find out how they get to where they are and what our readers of PIN magazine can learn from their experiences. However, I am also a landlord and a few years ago I featured in the magazine myself when I won the HMO Landlord of the year award – in fact, that’s how I got the job here with PIN! My partner (James) and I also have a portfolio of HMOs and single let properties and we also now are developing property. This diary is a snippet of what we do on a monthly basis; warts and all…

After several last minute stipulations from the mortgage lender we finally completed on our latest purchase this month; a four-bedroom house that is unusually large for a family and perfect for HMO conversion. One of those hitches came a few weeks ago when we were sitting in the solicitor’s office signing the final paperwork. During that meeting it transpired that the initial developer who built the house ten years ago had put a condition in the paperwork restricting a conversion to HMOs. Uh-oh!