Best HMO software (UK, 2026)

For one or two small HMOs you do not need a dedicated co-living platform. LetCompliance covers it on its own: HMO room-level management, per-room compliance, rent and the whole tenancy in one tool, so you are not stitching a general PM tool to a separate compliance tool. For 5+ HMOs or any co-living building, a dedicated HMO product such as COHO, with room listings, housemate profiles and per-tenant bill charges, can earn its place.

Not yet. Awaab’s Law applies to social landlords, and the government has said it will consult on extending it to private renting, with no date set. For an HMO landlord the binding duties today are the repairing and fitness obligations and council enforcement under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System, so a fast response and a dated record of every step remain the sensible standard.

HMO licences run for up to 5 years and are tied to a specific named operator and address. Renewal applications must be submitted before expiry to avoid an unlicensed-HMO charge (up to £30k civil penalty + Rent Repayment Order). The reminder logic in compliance software needs to fire 90+ days before expiry to leave room for the council process, a generic "30 days before" diary entry is not enough.

Yes. COHO handles room-level listings, housemate matching and per-tenant bill charges; LetCompliance handles compliance scoring, licence tracking, FRA, Awaab’s Law SLA and the Section 8 drafting layer. LetCompliance imports and exports CSVs.

Article 4 directions remove permitted-development rights to convert a property to a small HMO. None of these tools file the planning permission for you, but LetCompliance flags Article 4 areas at the address-tagging stage and reminds you to check planning before converting.

Student HMOs live or die on joint-tenancy paperwork, guarantors and per-room rent, not just a room board. COHO leads on room-level operations and housemate fit; LetCompliance handles the tenancy side students need, from joint tenancies, guarantor agreements, tenant referencing and per-room rent with each room’s arrears tracked to the Section 8 / Ground 8 route if a room falls behind, alongside HMO licence and fire-safety tracking. For student houses, LetCompliance covers the tenancy end to end on its own. A purpose-built block with heavy housemate matching and inclusive bills is where COHO earns its place.

They are two different jobs. Charging bills and services to each tenant is something COHO’s rent pages describe, and LetCompliance does not do it. Billing each room’s rent, tracking who has paid, chasing arrears and evidencing them for a Ground 8 claim is LetCompliance’s job: per-room rent schedules, arrears tracked per room with chasing you can switch on, optional Direct Debit collection and a timestamped audit trail. If you need both, run them together.

LetCompliance tracks rent room by room in an HMO, with each room’s rent due weekly, fortnightly, every four weeks or monthly and its own arrears position, from £7.99 a month; COHO, on this list, is built around rent schedules per room for HMO and co-living operators. In LetCompliance a weekly rent is counted in fixed 7-day periods from the start of the tenancy, or from a date you set, and the monthly figures the rest of the account reads are worked out from it. The rent that arrived can be confirmed across every room and property in one go, collected by Direct Debit into your own account with no commission, or matched from a bank statement CSV. Ground 8 sets its arrears threshold at 13 weeks for rent payable weekly or fortnightly and three months for monthly rent, and LetCompliance works it out on that basis; rent due every four weeks is in neither, so LetCompliance says to take advice before relying on Ground 8.