HMO Conversion London

A full conversion of a tired house into a compliant five-bed HMO typically costs £40,000–£75,000, working out around £33,000 per full Victorian conversion split across the rooms created. Where a property already works as a shared home, a compliance-led upgrade — bringing a four-bed up to standard with fire doors, separation and interlinked alarms — is far cheaper at £8,000–£20,000. We quote a fixed price after a survey against your borough’s standards.

A small HMO of up to six occupants is usually permitted development, but many London boroughs have an Article 4 direction that removes those rights and requires a full planning application for any HMO. Larger HMOs (seven or more) always need planning permission. We check whether an Article 4 direction applies to your address at survey and flag the planning route before any work starts.

A compliant HMO needs fire compartmentation between rooms and units, a protected escape route, FD30 fire doors with intumescent and smoke seals to risk rooms, an interlinked alarm system (typically Grade A or D LD), and emergency lighting where the escape route requires it. The exact specification follows your borough’s standards and the fire risk assessment, all of which we build to and certify.

National minimums set a single bedroom for one adult at no less than 6.51 square metres and a room for two adults at no less than 10.22 square metres, with children counted separately, but many London boroughs apply larger minimums through their own licensing standards. We design the layout to meet whichever standard your council enforces so each room is genuinely lettable under the licence.

Yes. We build to the standards the council inspects against and liaise with the licensing team throughout, then hand over the fire door, alarm and electrical certification needed to support the licence application. Leading with compliance from the layout stage is what gets a property through inspection first time rather than triggering remedial works after.