My first post, so please be gentle on me. Thanks for any pointers.
I am a single individual and was planning for a while to get a house, the mortgage on which I can afford on my own without any rental income. However, I was hoping not to live alone and hence wanted to buy a rather large house and share it with a friend and his family (married couple and their four underage children), taking them as lodgers.
However, it hit me recently that I will be possibly running afoul of the HMO regulations, since the above situation would be an not only an HMO (three people forming at least two households), but a large one at that! Thus I would need a license, so getting a mortgage would be difficult (let's not discuss the mortgage issue if HMO classification/license can be avoided).
My situation is not really the usual case where you have multiple unrelated lodgers, since all of them really form a single household, but I wanted to ask what the law says.
There is an exception where the landlord and his household count as one person, hence -- assuming I am reading the law correctly -- if it was my friend taking me as a lodger, the house would not be an HMO.
I asked morgage advisers and were told that would not be an HMO, but were not given a reference to a ruling so I don't trust that.
My question is, would this arrangement (single resident landlord plus lodgers forming a family of 6) be an HMO or not?
I am a single individual and was planning for a while to get a house, the mortgage on which I can afford on my own without any rental income. However, I was hoping not to live alone and hence wanted to buy a rather large house and share it with a friend and his family (married couple and their four underage children), taking them as lodgers.
However, it hit me recently that I will be possibly running afoul of the HMO regulations, since the above situation would be an not only an HMO (three people forming at least two households), but a large one at that! Thus I would need a license, so getting a mortgage would be difficult (let's not discuss the mortgage issue if HMO classification/license can be avoided).
My situation is not really the usual case where you have multiple unrelated lodgers, since all of them really form a single household, but I wanted to ask what the law says.
There is an exception where the landlord and his household count as one person, hence -- assuming I am reading the law correctly -- if it was my friend taking me as a lodger, the house would not be an HMO.
I asked morgage advisers and were told that would not be an HMO, but were not given a reference to a ruling so I don't trust that.
My question is, would this arrangement (single resident landlord plus lodgers forming a family of 6) be an HMO or not?
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