HMO Deal Calculator
A property screening system built for an HMO rent-to-rent business. It gathers the available property and market data for a batch of listings, applies the calculations the team already uses, and returns a report ready for review.
- Client
- HMO rent-to-rent business
- Built
- Property screening and decision workflow
- Work
- Workflow design, automation, data integration, deployment
- Status
- In daily use
Every listing started the same investigation.
The business was not short of properties to look at. It was short of a fast way to get through them. A promising listing was only the start. Someone still had to find the missing property details, check several outside sources, apply the same operating-cost assumptions, and rebuild the same deal calculation before the property could be compared with anything else.
That took 30 to 40 minutes per listing. Across hundreds of listings, the first screening pass alone could take days. The goal was never to automate the investment decision. It was to remove the repeated work that had to happen before that decision could be made.
- Open listing
- Find missing details
- Check outside sources
- Run the numbers
- Record the result
- Repeat
The repeated work became one workflow.
The calculator takes a batch of listings and moves each one through the same research and calculation process. It collects what the listing already says, brings in the relevant property and market data, applies the business's own deal criteria, and lays the result out in a consistent format. Instead of rebuilding the analysis one property at a time, the team gets a report it can sort, compare and filter.
- 1Capture. The selected listings enter the system as one batch.
- 2Enrich. Property, location and market information is pulled from the connected data sources.
- 3Calculate. The same deal assumptions and operating-cost calculations are applied to every suitable property.
- 4Check. Incomplete records and missing information are flagged before a result is treated as finished.
- 5Report. The processed properties land in a structured output ready for comparison and review.
More time on the properties worth a closer look.
30 to 40 minutes
Before, per property. Find the missing details, check the outside sources, rebuild the calculation.
About one minute
After, per property. With the source data available, the system does the research, data entry and calculation.
Hundreds at a time
Batches of listings through one repeatable workflow, sorted and compared in a single report.
Missing information is flagged, not filled in.
Property data is rarely complete. Listings leave out details. Outside records can be unavailable, inconsistent, or impossible to match with confidence. A useful system has to admit those limits rather than hide them.
The calculator separates incomplete results and sets them aside for manual follow-up. It does not invent figures or present an uncertain property as a finished analysis. The team stays responsible for deciding whether a deal is worth doing. The system gives them a faster and more consistent basis for that decision.
The system handles
Repeated property research
Data collection and organisation
Standard deal calculations
First-pass screening and comparison
Flagging incomplete results
The team keeps
Commercial assumptions
Manual investigation
Exceptions and uncertain data
Negotiation and strategy
The final decision
Does every decision start with the same tabs, lookups and spreadsheet?
Repeated analysis gets accepted as part of the job. The cost only becomes obvious once the same process runs across hundreds of records, enquiries or opportunities. I look at how the decision is made today, work out which parts a system can handle consistently, and build it around the judgement the business still needs to keep.
Built by Lorenzo Bergonzi, LB Systems