HMO licensing: what counts, and what happens if you don't have one

An HMO needs a licence from the local council once it crosses that council's threshold for one — and the threshold is not the same everywhere. There is a mandatory scheme that applies nationally above a set size, but a large number of councils also run their own additional or selective licensing on top of it, which can pull in much smaller properties too. Whichever route catches a given property, letting a licensable HMO without the licence it needs is a criminal offence.

What actually counts as an HMO

Broadly, a property is an HMO when it's let to people from more than one household who share a kitchen, bathroom or other facility — a classic house share, a bedsit conversion, or a building let room by room. Whether a particular one of those needs a licence, and from what size upward, depends on where it is.

Mandatory licensing is the part that applies everywhere. A property occupied by five or more people forming two or more households, sharing a kitchen, bathroom or toilet, needs a licence from the council wherever in England it stands. The test counts households, not strangers, which is where it most often gets miscounted: a family of four plus one lodger is five people in two households, and licensable.

That threshold is a floor rather than an answer. Many councils run additional licensing covering smaller HMOs, and some run selective licensing covering every private rental inside a designated area — so a three-person house share nowhere near the mandatory test can still need a licence, depending on the street it is on. That is why the national number is the wrong thing to reason from for a specific address. GOV.UK's licence finder tells you, by postcode, what your own council actually requires.

A licence, once you have one, is not a box you tick and forget. It normally needs renewing on a cycle the council sets, and it can carry ongoing conditions — things like management standards, room sizes or how many people can live there — that keep applying for as long as the licence runs, not just at the point of application. A property that met the conditions when it was first licensed can drift out of step later if the building changes or the council's requirements are updated, which is a separate risk from the licence expiring outright.

Why it's worth getting right the first time

Operating a licensable HMO without a licence is a criminal offence, not a paperwork lapse. The exact penalties, and who can act on an unlicensed property, are worth checking directly through the link above rather than taking a figure from a blog post that might be out of date by the time you read it — those details do change, and this one is not worth guessing at either.

What tends to catch people out is not knowing the law exists — most landlords letting a shared house have heard of HMO licensing in general terms — but applying it correctly to their specific property, at their specific council, and keeping it that way for as long as they let it.

It sits alongside the rest of the compliance list, not apart from it

A licensable HMO still needs everything a single-let property needs — gas safety, an EICR, an EPC — and HMOs typically carry additional fire safety requirements on top, because more people are sharing the same escape routes. We've written up the full compliance checklist for letting in England separately; licensing is one more item on that list, not a different list.

Room by room, not just per property

An HMO let room by room raises the same questions a single-let property does — who's living there, what condition each room was in at move-in, whether the certificates are current — multiplied by however many tenancies are running under one roof at once. Each room can carry its own tenancy, with its own move-in and move-out inventory, photographed and signed by both sides, while the licence itself sits against the building as a whole. Where an operator holds more than one HMO, or more than one building on the same site, keeping licences, certificates and individual room tenancies straight by memory or spreadsheet is where mistakes creep in — not through not knowing the rules, but through losing track of which property, which room, and which date.

Where Tenarize helps, and where it doesn't

Tenarize doesn't apply for your HMO licence, and it doesn't obtain or guarantee one on your behalf — that application goes to your council, and it's yours to make. What Tenarize does is track licensing as structured data against each property, alongside gas safety, the EICR, the EPC and the rest, and remind you before any of them are due to expire rather than leaving it to memory. It supports room-by-room HMO letting and groups multiple units under one building, so a portfolio of shared houses doesn't collapse into one flat list of addresses. Each room's move-in and move-out inventory is recorded with photos and signed by both sides, and every tenancy carries a dated audit trail you can export if a dispute or a licensing inspection ever needs one.

Where to check this yourself

• Find out if you need an HMO licence — GOV.UK, by postcode, because your own council sets the threshold
• Renting out a property — GOV.UK, where licensing sits among a landlord's other duties in England
• Shelter and Citizens Advice — free, independent advice on a specific property

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