Serving Client Through Property by Giving Them What They Want

Welcome Sophie Foote about Health and Safety. With a world of experience as a Scuba Diving Instructor; a degree in Social Anthropology; a Master’s in Southeast Asian Economics, Anthropology and Politics; and Air Traffic Control qualifications under her belt, Sophie has taken the plunge into the HMO (House in Multiple Occupation) markets. Ian and Sophie discuss her experience as a Diving Instructor and building a diving resort, working in an unfamiliar culture, her beginnings in HMO management, her drive to improve standards within the HMO market, good relationships with tenants, staying in control of rising energy costs, and her podcast ‘Girls in Property’. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sophie currently manages a portfolio of 14 HMOs and is starting to work with HMO conversions moving forward. 
• Starting in Scuba Diving, Sophie felt that the way forward was to be an owner and operator of her own diving school which led her to purchase land in Indonesia to set up and build it which gave her initial experience in property development.
• Returning to England for their children’s education, Sophie became an HMO operator as a franchisee of the ROOMS platform, a rent-to-rent model which manages HMOs for owners and pays base rent and collects individual rents from tenants to fulfil the margin. 
• Sophie has systemised the landlord-tenant relationship with quick cleaning and property maintenance turnarounds, an app-based system to allow communication between tenants and to report problems, and regular social meetings to improve rapport. 
• The demand for HMO rentals is increasing due to the cost of living. An ‘all in’ model allows tenants to make one payment that includes all the extraneous energy bills (currently prohibitively expensive) so people are leaving flat rentals and seeking rooms. 
• You can listen to Sophie and her co-hosts Athena and Julia’s podcast ‘Girls in Property’. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘For me, it’s making safe, comfortable, clean homes for our tenants because I view a lot of HMOs and the standard is really, really poor and there seems to be a typical HMO that’s a bit beige and falling apart.’ – Sophie

‘It’s very brave to start a business and develop all in a new country in what is probably a young relationship with your other half at the time. To try and put all that together it must have been very stressful.’ – Ian  

‘We had things like crabs in the walls sometimes. You’d get land crabs going up the bamboo or geckos, and monitor lizards. But bamboo is fairly easy to replace so…it wasn’t too bad.’ – Sophie

‘It’s really not difficult to be of a higher standard than most of the HMOs. It seems that most of them are typically student groups and they just left so anything that breaks is left broken, any mess is left uncleared. So we have a cleaner that goes in, and we maintain things very quickly. We have an app for our tenants so they can report stuff.’ – Sophie  

‘If you differentiate yourself within the market like you are, you’re never going to have an empty room.’ – Ian 

‘We’ve got smart thermostats in every property which we control and we turn the heating on in the morning and the evening for an hour or two and then the tenant can boost it for an hour as well, which means the heating can’t be left on all day.’ – Sophie 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

https://www.ianjrogers.com/

ABOUT THE HOST

Ian Rogers is an entrepreneur running businesses in the Real Estate, Construction and Facilities Management arena. Ian has over 40 years’ industry experience, as he was effectively born into construction with his father having his own bu