How To Reduce Energy Costs In HMOs With Dragons’ Den Entrepreneur Anthony Cherry

Struggling with high energy bills in your HMO? You're not alone. 

Today, I’m joined by Anthony Cherry, an HMO landlord and the founder of Timeostat – a company that makes smart thermostats. After facing the same energy challenges in his own HMOs, Anthony couldn’t find a solution, so he created one. 

Now, with a successful business and a Dragons Den appearance under his belt, he’s on a mission to help landlords manage energy costs better.

In this episode, we’ll talk about how to reduce energy consumption in HMOs, what the future of energy efficiency looks like, and Anthony’s journey from landlord to entrepreneur.

Topics covered in this episode:

• 03:01 - Understanding Energy Consumption in HMOs
• 05:58 - Practical Tips for Managing Energy Costs
• 08:50 - The Role of Smart Thermostats
• 15:02 - Benefits of HMO-specific Smart Thermostats
• 21:10 - Data-Driven Energy Management
• 26:49 - Anthony’s Journey and Dragon's Den Experience

*Get 5% OFF when you use the code ‘ROADMAP’ at https://timeostat.co.uk/ 

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Transcript

Andy Graham (00:02.67)

Hey, I'm Andy and you're listening to the HMO Podcast. Over 10 years ago, I set myself the challenge of building my own property portfolio. And what began as a short-term investment plan soon became a long-term commitment to change the way young people live together. I've now built several successful businesses. I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants. Join me and some very special guests to discover the tips, tricks and hacks, the ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to start, scale and systemise your very own HMO portfolio now.

Andy Graham (00:40.718)

Today, I'm joined by Anthony Cherry. Anthony is a HMO landlord himself, but he's also the founder of Timostat. Timostat are a company that specialise in making smart thermostatic devices. Now, as a landlord, Anthony found it difficult to keep on top of the bills in his HMOs and he couldn't find the device out there on the market that helps him control energy consumption effectively enough. So, what did Anthony do? Well, he went out and he built his own. He's been all the way to Dragon's Den and he's built a really successful company. Now, Anthony knows an awful lot about energy, as you would probably expect. 

Today, I want to ask him about energy, energy consumption, what we can be doing to actually manage and control the costs of energy in our HMOs, what the future looks like. And I also want to find out a bit more about Anthony's journey, how he's built a company alongside being a landlord. And he's got a really interesting story. 

So, today is a jam packed episode. I know that energy and energy consumption isn't the sexiest topic in the world when we're talking about HMOs, but trust me, and particularly at this time of the year when it's cold outside, well, managing energy and keeping on top of those costs should be one of your highest priorities. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode of the HMO Podcast.

Andy Graham (01:50.892)

Hey guys, it's Andy here. We're going to be getting back to the podcast in just a moment, but before we do, I want to tell you very quickly about the HMO roadmap. Now, if you're serious about replacing your income, or perhaps you've already got a HMO portfolio that you want to scale up, then the HMO roadmap really is your one-stop shop. 

Inside the roadmap, you'll find a full 60 lesson course delivered by me, teaching you how to find more deals, how to fund more deals and raise private finance, how to refurbish great properties, how to fill them with great tenants that stay for longer, and how to manage your properties and tenants for the future. We've also got guest workshops added every single month. We've got new videos added every single week about all sorts of topics. We've got downloadable resources, cheat sheets, and swipe files to help you. We've got case studies from guests and community members who are doing incredible projects that you can learn from. And we've also built an application just for you that allows you to appraise and evaluate your deals, stack them side by side and track the key metrics that are most important to you. To find out more, head to theHMORroadmap.co.uk now and come and join our incredible community of HMO property investors.

Andy Graham (03:01.006)

Anthony, thanks for joining me on the podcast today. 

Anthony: Hello. Nice to be here. 

Andy Graham: Feels like this is aptly time to be sitting down and recording with you because I'm sitting looking at my window and there is quite literally eight inches of snow outside. And today we're going to be talking about energy and heating and not perhaps one of the most sexy topics when it comes to investing in HMOs, but actually as someone who's been buying and managing HMOs for many, many years, a really, really important one, certainly in my opinion. And I know in your opinion as well.

Anthony, I'm sure a lot of people do know about you and the company that you run, but perhaps for the benefit of some of the people that don't, or maybe those that do, but don't quite know enough about what you do, can you give us a little bit of an intro? What is it that you do in the kind of the energy space and how is it that you help investors in the HMO world? 

Anthony: Yeah, no problem. I'm Anthony obviously, and I am an HMO investor myself. I got into HMOs about 20 years ago. I got portfolio in Northampton. And it was actually on the back of that that I got into the space I'm in at the moment, which is manufacturing thermostats specifically for HMO properties, but also for serviced accommodation and any kind of system where the landlord is paying for the utility bills in a property. So it was really, I got into the space as a result of a need. So I saw a need for a thermostat that was specific for HMOs. I couldn't find anything that was suitable. So I developed it myself. And back in 2016, we released the first Timeostat one and now we've had several versions later, still going strong. So it's gone really well.

Andy Graham: So the company that you run is Timeostat and actually, we'll perhaps get onto this later in today's episode. And perhaps this is where a lot of people know you from already, but you appeared on Dragon's Den, you were successful on Dragon's Den. And so actually, the Timeostat products and what you do has reached a lot of people. But today, what I think would be really great to discuss is how products like yours can practically help investors like us who are battling with the challenges of keeping bills and general costs of operating HMOs down. And it's becoming increasingly challenging, isn't it? And the last few years have been absolutely mental in terms of just inflation, obviously the energy issues. I mean, the energy crisis, which seems we've almost forgotten about because we've moved on to so many other challenges, this just rising costs of heating houses has been a huge part of sort of operating

Andy Graham (05:28.696)

property when you're paying the bills. So today I'd like to find out from you as an expert, what sort of things that we as investors can be doing and how products like yours can actually be helping us. But perhaps just to kick us off, Anthony, very high level, can you give us some sort of an idea as to what maybe sort of typically people can be expecting to pay to run and kind of heat HMOs, you know, we're talking about gas and electricity, but also what can happen if people are not on top of this. They're not really aware of where energy loss might be happening and what those bills could actually look like. 

Anthony: They can look pretty scary, to be honest, and they can take up a very large proportion of your overall costs. So certainly at the peak of the energy crisis before the massive increases in mortgage costs, it was actually more than half of your total costs in your HMO were accounted for by energy costs, which is crazy. Now it's still very high. It's just even compounded with the high mortgage costs as well. So it's so important to get on top of these figures as quickly as you can. And I was talking to someone today who's just got a five bed HMO and they had a gas bill last month of £750, which is sort of more than double the typical kind of figure for a five bed HMO. So a lot depends. Your heating costs can vary massively where depending on where you are in the country, depending on what kind of property you've got, how old that property is, and also how intuitive and how modern the construction is. But it also boils down to things like boilers, how modern your boiler is, how recent it's been serviced. And obviously if it's got a modern radiator valves and radiators in there, if they got old gunked up radios, it's far more inefficient and you'll find that your boiler is running an awful lot more than it should be. But it's also down to the tenants. What temperatures are they used to? Where are they from in the world? Some tenants enjoy colder climates and some people can't, some tenants don't tolerate that. And then there's arguments between those tenants in the houses as well. So it can all get very exciting. 

Andy Graham (07:42.64) You're right. It's a complicated exercise trying to manage energy in the HMOs, I would say, for all of the reasons you discussed. It's not ever a silver bullet solution to getting energy costs down. And I can completely agree and sympathise with anybody out there who is getting the bills through the cold months of the year, bringing them to tears because it can be eye watering at times if you're not careful. I would say in particular, over the years, I've managed a lot of houses and a lot of tenants. And there are occasions where that combination of factors that you just described has been particularly bad. It may have been a large HMO with a number of tenants who are not particularly cohesive. So they don't talk and get on well. They don't operate as one with any sort of great intention to be energy efficient. It's a big Victorian sort of palisade villa, lots of space in there. It's got an old heating system. And then purely from a managerial point of view, we weren't doing enough to actually moderate how the heating was switched on and controlled and the temperatures and things like that. And so we would get some pretty astonishing and really like scary, scary bills. 

And actually, quite early on, and I'm going back a number of years now, but quite early on, we made a big decision to invest quite heavily in smart thermostats. Now, those thermostats have obviously evolved over the years. Your time of stat, you guys are kind leading the way with that. But it's something that became an integral part of managing my portfolio and business, would say, Anthony. And it's difficult to quantify exactly how much taking a very different attitude in that part of our business saved us. But it was many, many tens of thousands. And that's after we spent a certain amount of money on paying for devices and then installing devices. 

So I'm a huge advocate for what we're talking about, but let's perhaps talk about some of the more sort of before we get onto the thermostats and what the thermostats like yours can do. What sort of things as investors, as landlords, can we be doing from a practical perspective to actually try and manage the costs before we start considering smart thermostats? Cause I think what you're going to tell us today is that there's some interesting data that you can collect as being sort of a timer stack user that can actually inform some of this stuff. 

It'd be interesting as we discuss this for our listeners to think about what of any of this stuff they're actually doing and already considering, if anything at all. But I suppose I'm thinking about how we can sort of modify and advise on behavior, what sort of things we can actually be doing to our properties before installing smart devices, what sort of costs we might consider even going to, to make some of these changes, because let's face it.

Andy Graham (10:17.87)

being energy efficient isn't a cheap business. So what sort of stuff in your experience alongside smart devices can we all be thinking about doing? 

Anthony: So there's lots of things you can, if we're looking at it from sort of a general energy cost point of view, so we're talking electricity and gas, there's a whole host of things that you can actually focus on. We hear a lot of talks around energy saving in HMOs around the country, but some of the biggest kind of take homes, a lot of it's the obvious stuff. 

So good insulation in the roof, double glazing LED light bulbs. But there's some other things that are possibly less obvious. Making sure that you've got, if possible, gas central heating. That's the cheapest of all the types of heating. So try and avoid anything that's electric. But also, you can do things like if you're offering a tumble dryer, there are more energy efficient tumble dryers that you can buy. So heat pump on tumble dryers. So using them, things like ditching kettles from your HMOs and putting in boiling water taps, that can save you a couple of hundred pounds a year as well on your electricity bills. 

Looking at something that you might not look at like the front and back door of property, have you still got the old wooden front door or is it a poorly fitting new PVC door that's walked in the sun over the last 15 years? Fitting a decent, well-fitting composite front and back door, suddenly you'll find that, that can improve the energy efficiency of the property massively and save you a couple of hundred pounds a year on your heating bills as well. Even things like a modern gas boiler. If your gas boiler is older than 10 years old, you can probably save about 15% by just switching to a more modern gas boiler. How old are your radiators? Do they look old and tired? If they are, they're probably all gunked up. The whole energy heating system isn't working efficiently. So you can save 15 % by changing your radiators and your radiator valves. 

Power flushing your heating system, that can save you money too. But you can also save money at source. So I know that shopping around for your energy kind of went out of fashion with regards to the energy caps. That's going to start to change again and start to come back in. I've started seeing adverts for Feb Gas and Oct saying, you can save money by switching to us. So I think they're back on it again now. So make sure that you select the correct tariff and the correct supplier make sure that you're paying a competitive rate for your gas and electricity. 

Andy Graham (12:40.798) There's obviously an awful lot of stuff that we can do and actually some of that stuff isn't that expensive. It's not that expensive to flush the boiler and optimise what you've already got. Obviously it's a little bit more expensive to replace a boiler, but there comes a point at which making repairs to old boilers is uneconomic anyway. And these are the sorts of things for our listeners today that are perhaps just getting started and excited about that.

project or two and making it look great. The real test is actually over the long period when it comes to HMOs and it's actually maintaining. It's quite easy in my opinion to fill HMOs and get the top rents as soon as you finish your project, but actually maintaining that over the long term is the harder bit and maintaining profitability, good levels over the long term. That's also a really tricky thing to actually, in my experience, maintain. So those sorts of things I think are really important. And I'm glad you also mentioned trying to save costs at source.

That's one of the single sort of most important things that I think I've done over the years. And I, like many landlords, have become really complacent with it. I would just roll over with the same supplier, wouldn't really go out and shop the market. And actually, just in good time, actually, I did do. And I'll tell you a little story. When I was managing a lot of HMOs before I sold my investment business, a couple of years ago, just before we went into the energy crisis, things started to sort of tip in the wrong direction. 

We had quite a good deal with an energy supplier that kind of gave us an all-inclusive package, you like, which really well, particularly for the student properties, but we had the same packages on our professional ones and we were paying about 15 pounds per person per week for our gas and electricity. And they would actually include the wifi as well. At that point, 15 pounds per person per week didn't sound incredible. That was actually probably a little bit more than it would have been had we've just done it independently. But I had a bit of a gauge on where the market was going and I thought fixing into that would look good 12, 18 months down the line and it looked exceptional. 12, 18 months down the line and those prices very quickly doubled. 

And actually since then, it's something that as a matter of course, every year I've made a real point of making sure that as a business, we're checking that we're not overspending when we can't be getting better rates and tariffs from elsewhere. But it's hard work and actually you've got to have a good understanding, I think, a good grasp of actually how energy is calculated.

Andy Graham (15:02.754)

and how it's being used in your, your HMOs. But that's because you have just a bit extra for me on this stuff. Let's talk then about the smart thermostats. Obviously that's your business. That's what you do. And I know, and I said, as we kicked off today, it's been a really important part of my business using smart thermostats to keep on top of our energy bills to certainly prevent them spiraling out of control. So can you tell us a little bit about how these sorts of devices work and perhaps give us some examples, Anthony, of the types of savings that we could potentially make if we have these in place?

Anthony:  I think that the three biggest, most cost effective things that you can do to your HMO to save money on heating is good loft insulation, thermal curtains, and then by far the biggest is going to be using a smart thermostat, a good HMO specific thermostat. Because that can save you typically, our customers save around about 40 % on their hinting bills, depending on what they've got beforehand after fitting a thermostat, which is a huge amount to save going forward. So we've got several models and it's which one is really suitable for your needs. 

Andy Graham: One thing I want to really highlight to our listeners that you just said then is a HMO specific thermostat. I think that that bit is actually really important and would have been quite easy to forget in this discussion today. There's lots of smart thermostats on the market, Nest, Hive and things like that but I think what we're about to discuss is actually why a smart thermostat specifically for HMO is kind of imperative because they do work quite differently and they do give you a lot more control than a typical sort of residential smart thermostat would give you, doesn't it? So can you talk to us, about some of the features and how those features actually translate into savings to a landlord, to an investor? 

Anthony: Okay. So with the time that for example, the new time to start one, which is a a smart thermostat, which has got an app for the landlord. That allows the tenants access to the heating so they can turn the heating on whenever they like, which is really important because last thing you want is your tenants not being able to turn the heating on when they want to have the heating on. But what it does do is it means the heating won't be left running because when they turn the heating on, they're essentially boosting the heating for a set period of time, say for example, two hours, and then the heating will turn off. And the landlord from their app can have different settings, so different heating times that they can set on that the heating comes on automatically, minimum temperatures, boost temperatures, they can control all the parameters remotely, but the tenants can't change them. All the tenants see is a button in essence that will boost the heating when they're cold. So the tenants are happy because they can turn the heating on, but the heating isn't going to be left running when the tenants go out to university or to work for the day.

It’s not going to be left running constantly over the weekend when they may all go home or over a holiday. So the landlord is not paying to heat an empty house. And that's very key with HMOs because there's lots of times when HMOs are empty and there's nobody there. And the last thing you want to be doing is paying to heat an empty house. It's not about making tenants cold. It's about stopping wasted energy. And that actually allows you to offer more competitive rents and is more environmentally friendly as well. So it's kind of a win, win, win scenario.

Andy Graham (18:23.728) So the tenants get heating when they want, but the time for which that heating will remain on is obviously controlled and set by you, by the landlord. And that might be an informed decision you make on perhaps time of the year or which generally determines the sort of sort of temperatures and things like that. Maybe the types of tenants that you've got. Actually, I know some people that have got particular types of demographics in their houses, some tenants that just work night shifts. In fact, I had for a long time a number of flats in a building and they all work night shifts. And so actually what they needed was quite different to what other people needed. 

The settings and the heating was just quite different to what we would typically have you and I in our houses. So these devices give them that sort of flexibility, but give you the ability to control it. Obviously it gives you the ability to control the temperature. And does it give you the ability, Anthony, to prevent overheating in houses? Because this is something I think typically with students that we have seen, they will run to the boiler, they'll turn it on full, all the radiators are on full whack, and it'll go from maybe being a little bit cooler in the house to incredibly overheated, and then naturally what we see is the windows in the middle of winter with snow on the ground outside, and they're all bloody airing the house. And I mean, I've seen it so many times, it's quite funny if you walk down the streets that are just lined with student houses through winter, it's quite interesting to see how many just have windows wide open, and you know full well that they've got the heating absolutely blasting inside.

Andy Graham (19:49.856)

Smart devices give a lot more control over these sorts of things, don't they? 

Anthony: They do, yeah. And the Timostat has things like maximum temperatures that stop that from happening. But one of the big advantages over Timostat being an HMO specific thermostat is that on your app, so if you're a landlord, you can have all of your properties listed on just a single login. So you log in and you can see all your properties and you can see the temperatures in them. You can see if they've got any boosts running. You can see the energy efficiency scores for those properties as well, and a whole host of data if you need to. 

But at glance, you can see exactly what's going on throughout your whole portfolio. With other devices such as Nest and Hives and other smart thermostats that aren't HMO specific, you would have to log in and then log out onto different accounts and remember all your passwords and log in email addresses for each of your different properties. so it's a logistical nightmare. So that's something that you want to definitely avoid. And that's one of the advantages. I developed this thermostat for HMOs, for HMO landlords, for me. So I've tried to make it as specific and useful as possible. 

Andy Graham: This is another huge benefit for me as a landlord actually is an investor with large portfolio managing lots of tenants, as well as reducing the bills in the houses and be able to control that. It was a certain level of operational efficiency that we were able to introduce into the business, which previously we weren't. We were forever trying to tell tenants how to manage the heating in their houses with different types of boilers and different types of thermostats that they had. Actually, by installing the same thing and repeating that process, we could produce one set of instructions that we could give to practically every set of tenants that we had. And then we could train our team and our staff on exactly how to use the systems, how to change the settings on them. 

We could have certain processes in place so that at certain times of the year, we knew that we should be going in, looking at usage. We would look at data such as the boost features you described and how often tenants are clicking all that. And obviously the dashboard gives you that on timestamp. And we could use that to inform whether or not it was time to start reducing the heating a little bit across the board and making those sensible changes so that actually, well, in winter, tenants might need the heating on for a little bit longer. We could close those windows a little bit into the spring and then obviously furthermore in the summer, we could actually reduce the maximum temperatures and stuff like that. So it gave us that extra layer of operational efficiency. And I've actually got one more really practical and useful example. And again, I'll share a story on this one. On many occasions, and you've probably come across this before, Anthony, but we had fair usage caps in the tenancy agreements and we would pay a certain amount of the bills and that was part of the tenancy agreement. 

But when the tenants would overspend, we were within our rights contractually to reclaim some of that cost. Now, it works both ways. If they underspend, you've got to give them that difference back. But especially when bills were rising quite quickly, it's quite important for us to manage that risk. We're paying your bills, but this X amount of your bill allowance, that is contribution to heating. So let's use 15 pound per person per week, which is maybe what it was at the time.

And occasionally some houses would come back and they would significantly overspend despite all the instructions and advice that we would give them. And a lot of that would boil down to behavior. And we could see that because the data said it. And I'll give you a really good example. We had a group of tenants that at the end of the tenancy ended up with quite a significant overspend on their utility allowance that we were within our rights to sort of say, look, you've overspent and we're going to reclaim this from your deposit. And they had been notified of this overuse periodically through the year when we would feed back on the data and we would ask them to modify their behavior. 

And it obviously fell on deaf ears. And when it came to reclaiming it from their deposit, they put up a really sort of strong sort of argument to say that actually the heating system in the house, it was obviously inefficient, all these sorts of things which contributed to the overspend. And actually what we able to demonstrate was periods of the year when they hadn't even been living in the house and they told us this, they'd literally said to us,

We got bills over January and we weren't living in the house over Christmas. We can see that actually they would sort of what they were doing with the heating over that Christmas period because we had all of the data and actually they were overusing it and spending an awful lot through periods when they actually suggesting that they weren't there. So it gives a huge amount of data. And actually I found that in some scenarios where it can be a bit tricky with tricky groups of tenants, it's really useful to have that data and you can literally break it down and you can see how many times people are boosting it.

Andy Graham (24:29.804)

what temperatures they're using it to and all sorts of things like that. So as a business, as an investor, I found that really useful as well, because I often like to know that there is some sort of a backstop to most problems that we will have. And having the data, I think is a really good, good way of doing that. So for me, smart thermostats, being able to reduce the bills really efficiently in terms of what the devices cost to buy and install versus what we could save over the course of a year. Also having the operational efficiency and being able to manage lots of heating systems, from one dashboard, fantastic. And then actually having the data to be able to appropriately feed back to tenants and get them to try and modify their behavior is really, really great. 

Without them, it's almost impossible to do that. It's really difficult to look at a bill and say exactly why the bill is high without a sub smart thermostat, you don't really know, correct me if I'm wrong, whether or not it's your windows, whether it's you leaking it through your doors, lack of insulation, whether it's just sort of tenant behavior, whether it's a mixture of all of this, but having a smart device, it actually gives you a lot more information so you can make more informed decisions about this sort of stuff and whether or not you need to make any other changes to the property. Is that about right as well, Antony? That's what you can do with the data. 

Anthony: That's what we do with the data. Naturally with our properties dashboard where you've got all your properties, it generates a house and a user score. So it gives you two scores out of between zero and five, which actually analyses the system and house performance and also what the tenants are up to. So like you mentioned about how many times they're boosting or what temperatures they're boosting, that will get fed into basically the user score. So if you've got a very low user score, it might be that your tenants are boosting the heating when the temperature is already high. Now that could be through tenant behavior, but it could also be that the thermostat is not very well located. It might be located in the wrong place, not a representative temperature for the property. 

So either way, will give you an idea that something's wrong if that score's low. And similarly with the house score, that will score a zero to five as well. And if you've got a poor house score, you know, sort of zero or one or two, it means that after a heating event, your property is losing heat more rapidly than other similar size properties in the area. So it just means that, hello something's wrong there.

Maybe the insulation isn't very good in that property. So easily from your portfolio, you can think, right, okay, these three properties here, let's look at them and maybe they need a new front door. Maybe they need thermal curtains or maybe they need a better installation in the roof. But you can help target and spend your money to improve the energy efficiency of your portfolio more easily and more effectively using the timeostats reporting functions.

Andy Graham: The more that I learn about these sorts of devices, the more that I think it's just an absolute no brainer. So for anybody listening to today that is either thinking about setting up a HMO for the first time and thinking about what to do with the heating, or maybe is already running a portfolio, but doesn't have this sort of stuff in place, I think it's an absolute no brainer. The amount of data and the amount of cost that you can save really is a no brainer in my opinion. Before we wrap up today, I want to ask you a little bit more about some of the timeostat devices. 

And I think actually you've been really generous in actually being able to offer our listeners and community members at a discount to timeostat. We'll kind of come onto that. Before we get that, I do want to ask a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey. I love talking about business and property and you're an investor like me and also a business owner like myself. And you kind of this idea building your own thermostat actually took you all the way to Dragon's Den and well beyond. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience, Anthony? What's it like going on to Dragon's Den? Has that changed the trajectory? Anything? Did you learn anything? Is it different to perhaps what we might think? Cause that's often what stuff is like behind TV. I suppose just from being nosy, what's it like taking something like this onto Dragon's Dam? 

Anthony: It's an entrepreneur's dream really. It's kind of like the pinnacle. It's where you want to go. I was really happy to be selected to be able to go on it. And it is a very genuine experience. It's not all for TV. And what you saw on the TV is what happened. Just a very small section of it. And so I was in front of the dragons for about an hour and 15 minutes, hour and a half. And they cut that down to 15 minutes. So there's a lot that's said, that you don't see, but I have watched it back once. I could only manage it once, but it was a cracking experience. Would I do it again? Not now that I've done it once, I recommend it for any business owner. And the exposure was fantastic. And the people, all the dragons were really nice and friendly, supportive. It was nerve wracking, as you can probably see from watching it, but it was a great experience. And I got a lot of phone calls and sales and exposure on the back of it, which is great. 

Andy Graham: I bet it did. Out of interest, did any of the Dragons, did any of them invest in HMOs themselves? Did they know what HMOs were or was that all quite new to them as well? 

Anthony: They all knew what HMOs were and Tuca who invested, unfortunately didn't go through, so to speak, but he had a lot of experience in HMOs and had a lot of contacts. That's why he was particularly interested. And Deborah Meaden had lots of contacts in the holiday park industry, which is very similar to HMOs in that you pay for the bills and you've got guests or tenants coming in and staying in their caravans. So she was very interested as well. You didn't really see much of that on the TV, unfortunately, because that was a long discussion I had with her, which they decided to cut out. But it was good.

Andy Graham: Well, I thought you came off really, really well. And since I had the opportunity to meet you, you came to one of our end-shet meetings where me and my agency, pals get together every so often and you manage a lot of HMOs across the country. And I know that you can helping a lot of the people that I know make really good sort of improvements from an energy efficiency point of view across their entire portfolio. So tell us a little bit about the products that you're working on at the minute, if you would, Anthony. 

Anthony: Yeah. So we've got the new product, which is the Timeostat One which is the smart bond with the app. then historically we've got the Timeostat Classic. They're the two that are out at the moment. The Classic doesn't have an app, but we've sold sort of 15,000 of them country-wide and it's been very, very popular. So that's going forward. But in the next few months and about the next month, we will have the wireless version of the Timestat One. So the Timeostat One at the moment is wired directly into the boiler and we're releasing a wireless version as well to complement that.

They're both going to have the app and that's pretty exciting. But within the next six months, we're going to be replacing the Timeostat Classic with something called the Timeostat Connect, which is just basically very similar to the Classic, but it will have app connection and it will be sort of redesigned a little bit more modern, newer screens. It's going to look a bit cooler and that's really going to be replacing that. And it's going to be hopefully a big step forward. So I'm looking forward to that in the next six months. Now, so there's a lot going on. 

Andy Graham (31:33.174)

So a few choices. So for any of our listeners who need to do this, head over to Timeostat website. Is that the best place? 

Anthony: Yeah. Go to the website and then you can just purchase the moment you've got the choice of the Timeostat  one or the Timeostat  classic. I think we've got stock of both at the moment and they're sent out typically the next day. And I think there's a code, isn't there, for our listeners, community members, that will give them a cheeky little discount. 

Anthony: Cheeky little discount. That'll get them 5% if they use roadmap that I get 5 % off the order. That can be roadmap in capitals or in lowercase, doesn't make any difference. And can pop that in there. 

Andy Graham: Can't say fairer than that. Anthony, it's been an absolute pleasure getting you on the show today and getting that insight from somebody who lives and breathes this stuff. I know how much it takes to build a business and I know how much you've obviously poured into Timeostat. You can't build a product in a business like this if you don't really understand the industry and just the snippets of insight that you shared today about energy and energy saving and things that we need to think on a practical level about as investors and landlords, think is really, really useful. Like I said, not necessarily the sexiest thing when it comes to HMOs. We like the idea of making really nice properties and making loads of money, but actually it boils down to little things and energy efficiency and reducing costs is so, so important. I'm not saying because you're on the show, it is that important. It is such a bleed on a business if you don't get on top of this stuff. 

So for everybody listening today, if you haven't got this stuff in place and you are supplying the bills and you're paying for the bills for your tenants, don't wait, get it in place, get on top of it, get ahead of it. I promise you won't regret it. Anthony, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on to find out about Timeostat, a little bit more about you and what you're up to. And thank you for all of your insights into the interesting and often confusing world of energy. 

Anthony: That's been fantastic being here. Thanks.

Andy Graham (33:29.774)

That's it for today's episode, guys. Thank you for tuning in. Now, don't forget that if you want to level things up, make sure you head over to the HMOroadmap.co.uk. We've got one of our biggest sales ever on at the moment, and you can take advantage of everything that we have got for offer inside the HMO roadmap, 20% off. You'll never get an offer like this again. Get your hands on over 70 case studies from the community. Get your hands on all of my downloadable resource and templates that not only just save you hours and hours and hours of time,

that will save you literally thousands of pounds having to create them yourself. Investor decks, loan agreement templates, rent to rent agreements, welcome packs. We've got everything you could possibly need. We've got the deal stacker. So if you're looking at deals, you want to do the maths, you want to appraise your deals, I've got it all inside the HMO roadmap waiting for you. Stack your deals, compare them side by side, track the key metrics, the most important pieces of data to you. You've also got expert master classes from everybody, including Ellie, our mortgage broker, Andrew and Mary, our architects, planning consultants, interior designers, and a whole lot more. 60 lessons from me teaching you step-by-step how to start, scale and systemise through the process of finding more deals, funding your deals, raising private finance, fixing and refurbishing, finding and filling them with great tenants, and then getting into the flow of good property management to actually monetise your HMO investments. 

Trust me, for less than the price of a cup of coffee every single day. This could be the single most important decision that you make in 2025 to help you on the journey of building a really incredible and really successful HMO property business. So go and grab that offer before it disappears. Just head to theHMOroadmap.co.uk. I promise you will not regret it. That's it guys. Thank you once again. And don't forget that I'll be right back here in the very same place next week. So please join me then for another installment of the HMO Podcast.