Student & HMO Inventory Services in Selly Oak

A five bed on Dawlish Road isn't one inventory. It's six

Here's where Selly Oak landlords get caught out. The house is let on individual room tenancies. The inventory is written as one property. Then a bedroom door gets kicked through, and all five tenants say it wasn't them.

Nine times out of ten, that deduction fails. Not because the damage isn't real. Because nothing in the report ties a room, a tenant and a condition together on day one.

So I write them room by room. Every bedroom gets its own schedule of condition and its own photographs, signed by the tenant in it. Communal areas are recorded separately. Kitchen, bathroom, hallway, garden, bin store. That's where joint and several liability bites.

At check-out the comparison runs line by line, so "who pays for this" has an answer. That's the difference between a deduction that sticks at TDS, DPS or MyDeposits, and one that quietly gets handed back.

Every July, the same argument about cleaning

"The house was cleaned." "No it wasn't." I've stood on enough Bournbrook doorsteps in August to know how that one ends.

I'll be honest with you. Without an independent check-in and dated photographs, that argument goes the tenant's way. And rightly so. You can't prove a standard you never recorded.

So we record it. Every room at the start, oven and bathroom included. Tenants and guarantors get the same report, so nobody's guessing eleven months later.

What licensing actually applies to your Selly Oak HMO

Selly Oak landlords get told a lot of nonsense about licensing, usually a few years out of date. Here's where it stands.

Birmingham's Article 4 Direction has been city-wide since 8 June 2020. It replaced and cancelled the old Selly Oak, Harborne and Edgbaston direction. So this isn't a Selly Oak rule any more. Converting a family house into a small HMO needs planning permission anywhere in the city.

Additional licensing runs city-wide from 5 June 2023 to 4 June 2028. It catches smaller HMOs: three or more people forming more than one household. Mandatory licensing starts at five or more occupants from two or more households.

Then there's the split most people miss. The Bournbrook and Selly Park ward sits inside Birmingham's selective licensing scheme, which covers 25 of the city's 69 wards. The Weoley and Selly Oak ward doesn't. Same suburb, two regimes. Worth knowing which side you're on.

Licensed HMOs get inspected on room sizes too. That's 6.51 square metres for one person over ten, 10.22 for two, and 4.64 for a child under ten. Plus fire doors, alarms and escape routes. A dated, photographic inventory report proves what was in place, and when.

This is general guidance for landlords and letting agents, not legal advice. For your specific duties, check current HSE and GOV.UK guidance, or Birmingham City Council's ward checker, or speak to a qualified professional.

July and August in Selly Oak are chaos. We're built for it

Whole streets turn over in a fortnight. Dawlish Road, Tiverton Road, Heeley Road, Teignmouth Road, Bournbrook Road, Alton Road. Tenants leave, cleaners go in, the next academic year lands. All of it inside one short window.

If your clerk can't do six check-outs in a week, you've got a problem. We can.

That matters more since Section 21 went on 1 May 2026. Student HMO possession now runs on Ground 4A. Written notice before the tenancy starts. Every occupant in full-time study. And a possession date between 1 June and 30 September.

Miss that window and you're looking at void weeks, or a whole year of rent gone. So book your summer check-out inspection slots in spring. The landlords who call me in May get the dates they want.