6-bed HMO with loft conversion · Crewe, Cheshire (former cannabis farm)

A mid-terraced property in Crewe, Cheshire. Its previous life: a cannabis farm. So when the rip-out started, the team knew there'd be issues, and there were. The wiring and electrics were a mess. There was a fairly bad case of rising damp.

What the team wasn't prepared for was the dry rot. A leak in the roof had caused significant water ingress, and the resulting conditions were perfect for dry rot to thrive, and spread. Unforeseen finds exactly like this are why every property investor needs a contingency fund. When you go back to brick, you discover hidden issues that weren't in anyone's budget, and to progress, they have to be fixed.

Back to brick. Full rewire (the cannabis-farm electrics had to go entirely). Rising damp treated properly. Dry rot eradicated and the affected timber replaced, non-negotiable, because dry rot left untreated spreads through a building until it's structural.

Six bedrooms: five en-suite, one off-suite. An off-suite is a private bath/shower room that isn't physically attached to the bedroom, the tenant holds their own key so only they use it. The sixth bedroom was created in the loft, converted under Permitted Development (no planning application needed).

Then the due-diligence lesson. HYPE has done HMO conversions across Birmingham, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Stoke-on-Trent. Crewe falls under Cheshire East Council, whose HMO amenity standards are materially stricter than anything HYPE had previously worked under. Their 'Amenities and Facilities Standards in HMOs' guidance dictates the free space that must be left around WCs and the minimum size of sinks. To save space in HMO en-suites we'd normally fit a small vanity unit, Cheshire East's guidance doesn't permit that. The owner had to incur further cost to comply.

We cannot stress the importance of due diligence enough. The local-council HMO rules are not uniform across England. What's compliant in Stoke can be non-compliant in Crewe. As experienced HMO builders, even we learned something new on this one.

From a damp, dry-rotted former cannabis farm to a fully-compliant 6-bed HMO with a brand-new loft bedroom, five en-suites, and an off-suite. The build is one of the most useful in HYPE's portfolio precisely because it went wrong in instructive ways: it's the case study to read if you want to understand why contingency funds exist and why you check the LOCAL council's HMO rules before you commit a budget.