Relo Rooms

Miles Moves House

Back in 2015 Miles moved into a shared house in Oxford. Having been spun the typically letting agent spiel, he was expecting good things from them.

However good things were not to come.

Miles encountered eye-watering rents for damp and dirty accommodation, uninterested letting agents once he had moved in who didn’t react to maintenance requests or do anything really. This was combined with being hit with expected fees out of the blue and tied into lengthy, rigid contracts, impossible to get out of once tied in. Being his first house shared, Miles didn’t really know what to expect and soldiered on thinking that was just the way it was done.

Miles Buys a House

Not really knowing how the whole house-sharing industry operated, Miles assumed this was the way it was done until he decided to purchase his own house to rent out on a room by room basis.

Not wanting to manage a house share himself due to the intensive management required from letting to 6 individual tenants, Miles started looking for a local letting agent to manage his new house share.

However, nearly all the letting agents he approached had no desire to manage HMOs.

So it looked like Miles was about to become his own letting agent.

Slowly gaining an understanding of how the house-sharing industry works. Miles continued to rent out his house on a room by room basis to professional tenants, learning and listening to what they wanted.

The Birth of Relo

Having realised that no traditional letting agents were going to want to take on the management of HMOs, Miles decided that behind the management of his own house share, there needed to be some kind of brand for little things such as notices on the notice board and logos on tenancy agreements to provide a professional feel to potential tenants looking to rent a room in his shared house.

And thus, the brand Relo was born.

Relo had a rather unspectacular birth. Initially started as a brand just for Miles to let his own rooms, there was no website or much behind the brand at all apart from a logo created on Paint.

Word Gets Out

Over the year that Miles let and managed his own houseshare, he was approached several times by people looking to purchase HMOs and have them managed.

With the increasing rise in popularity of investors looking to buy shared houses, It became very apparent there was a gap in the market to set up a dedicated letting agency only specialising in letting and managing professional shared houses.

Initially, Miles resisted the approaches from other investors as he wanted to just focus on letting and managing his own properties under the Relo brand. However, as he went on to purchase more houses, he soon realised he needed to hire someone to help manage his properties. And thus Relo's first employee was hired.

Now with little pressure of the day-to-day jobs of managing tenants, Miles realised that he had all the processes and systems in place, and it would be very little additional work to manage other investors shared houses on their behalf.

Building a Business

Relo take on their first landlord!

Having taken on their first landlord wanting their shared house managed, Miles made a decision to build a specialist shared house letting agency focusing on managing only HMOs.

Miles then spent the next two years growing Relo, refining the processes and brand, two websites later and taking on a handful of landlords wanting their shared houses managed in Hereford.

But it was extremely tough only operating in Hereford, especially with a huge number of investors coming and buying HMOs, with many of them wanting to self-manage to save on management fees. This meant the supply of rooms shot up in Hereford and it was becoming increasingly harder to fill Relo's rooms.

With the increasing number of rooms popping up in Hereford, Relo decided to expand out into Worcester and Gloucester to grow the business.

Change Required

It soon became very apparent that tenants wanted a different way of renting rooms within what was still a fairly traditional industry stuck in old ways.

Miles and the Relo team decided to survey their tenants and actually ask them what they wanted from a letting agent. Very quickly it became obvious tenants were fed up with expensive upfront moving costs, being tied into lengthy contracts and being hit with hidden costs from letting agents, all of which Relo had been guilty of too.

So, Relo decided to do something very radical and turn the traditional renting market upside down, having heard what tenants actually wanted, not what was best for landlords or letting agents. Relo spent 12 months testing, tweaking and figuring out how best to give the tenants what they wanted when they rented rooms in new cities.

The Here and Now

The result is the launch of Relo's radical lettings and management service, aimed to revolutionise the room rental market based on feedback from actual tenants on what they want and thus the introduction of our transparent fee structure with one monthly payment and never any hidden costs. Our cancel anytime policy with no fixed contracts, purely done on a month-by-month basis, as well as our 30-day rent back, guarantee if tenants are not 100% happy with Relo. Along with not taking deposits to reduce upfront moving costs for our tenants and focusing on building a community of tenants in cities with our regular social events (Covid 19 permitting!!!).

Relo will continue to adapt and innovate based on feedback from our tenants to ensure we provide the ultimate renting experience for any professional moving to a new city looking for rooms to rent.