5-bed HMO with kitchenettes · Birches Head, Stoke-on-Trent

A Birches Head property earmarked for conversion. Solid envelope, awkward layout that needed strip-out to deliver the studio-plus-shared-bedrooms layout the investor wanted. The non-standard brief came together with the original building: a HMO that doesn't read as a HMO is harder to build into a standard layout. The layout was going to need a full strip-out: hence near back-to-brick.

A few subtle changes as we move from 25% to the halfway point at the Birches Head HMO conversion. The headline: new patio doors have replaced the original window in the communal lounge. These make a huge difference: light, access to the rear of the house, the room reads as a flat's living room rather than a HMO common area.

Strip-out essentially complete. Studio room layouts setting out. First-fix services running through the new bedroom positions.

If you're thinking of building a HMO with kitchenettes, you'll need a heat alarm in each kitchenette as well as a smoke alarm. That's because by adding a kitchenette to a room you're effectively creating another potential hot zone: and the smoke detector alone isn't enough to satisfy current HMO licensing on that configuration. Two alarms per studio. Not optional.

This is the kind of regulatory detail that catches investors who try to convert an HMO without specialist help. We catch it at scope stage, price it in, and the build never has to come back to it.

Nearing the end of the project. Much of the plastering is now done, although in some areas we've reverted to taping and jointing rather than full skim to save on cost without losing the finish.

Also saving on cost: leaving some of the brickwork exposed in select rooms. The bare bricks have been washed and sealed with PVA. Two-for-one, keeps the room budget in check AND adds an aesthetic element that lifts the property out of generic-HMO territory.

And yes, the painter and decorator is still employed at HYPE Building after this one. Given the intricacy of the brief he was working to, he did a sterling job. Those colour-block lines are immaculate. (No, the paint and wallpaper choices weren't his.)

And voila, HMO finito. (You didn't know we were multilingual, did you?) The 5-bed conversion is complete, albeit not yet dressed for tenant arrival, everything is still shrink-wrapped for protection in the handover photos.

Two en-suite studios with their own kitchenettes. Three sizeable shared-bath bedrooms. Communal lounge with patio doors. Exposed-brick feature walls where the budget benefited from it. Plaster + tape-jointing finish. Painted to a level the painter is right to be proud of. Heat alarms in the studios, smoke alarms throughout, fire-rated compartmentation, fire-rated doors. Licensable and lettable.

Tired Birches Head property to a 5-bed HMO with a deliberately premium tenant draw. Two of the rooms pull professionals who'd otherwise rent one-beds at higher monthly cost. The remaining three pull the standard HMO tenant pool. Mixed-tier tenancy spreads vacancy risk and lifts the blended yield. The full four-part build series is on HypeTV.