Richard Nicholls
I've spent more than twenty years in HMOs and visit hundreds a month as Lead Valuer at HMO X. I created the Tier Methodology, build free tools that read any HMO the way a valuer does, write and speak about the market, and I'm open about the year I spent in prison and how I rebuilt.
Lead Valuer and Business Development Manager at HMO X. Landlords, investors, agents and lenders come to me for what an HMO is really worth and how to make it better.
My property work 02Four tools for every stage, buy, hold, sell and develop, all built on the Tier Methodology and HMO X evidence across 205 towns, updated weekly.
See the tools 03Time to Trade, the diary I kept in prison, is out now. The Honest HMO, what every house can sustain, launches in November 2026.
My books 04More than 50 talks since 2024 on the HMO market, the lessons from my mistakes, and my story of prison, accountability and rebuilding.
Book me for 2026/27
Launching November 2026
What every house can sustain, and what that means for you in 2027
Launch rents fade. Houses drift. Buyers and lenders price what a house can hold, not what it once achieved. Built on the Tier Methodology and twenty-odd years of hallways, it shows landlords, investors and developers how to read any HMO the way a valuer does, from the market and the five tiers to the leverage trap, buying, running and selling.
Out now · £12.99
The diary I kept for a year in prison
Three prisons, a business lost from a cell, a son fought for down a prison phone, and a property course written by hand on lined A4. Honest, sometimes funny, sometimes hard to read, and the first of three books.
I started in estate agency at 15, was valuing houses at 21, and for most of the last decade I've worked almost entirely in HMOs: as a valuer, trainer, agency owner and now at HMO X, where I helped launch the UK's first specialist HMO auction house.
In 2016 and 2017, working outside my field in London, I let people down who had trusted me. I stopped, went back to what I knew and rebuilt, but the case still came, and in December 2022 I was sentenced to three years. I served 370 days, kept a diary every day, and came home to start again from nothing.
The HMO world took me back, and I'm forever thankful for it. It's why I talk about all of it openly: hiding it helps nobody, rehabilitation is real but not automatic, and one day I want to take Prisoner to Property into prisons to help the next person.
Three talks for property audiences and mixed rooms: an HMO market update built on hundreds of visits a month, what my mistakes have taught me, and my story, ask me anything.
