A landlord managing for landlords
Leyo is run by Lily Cunningham, who has been letting property in Leeds and York since 2016.
[PLACEHOLDER — founder photograph]
How this started
I bought my first house in York in 2016. I was living in London at the time, renting a room in an HMO, and I wanted a house of my own. London prices meant that was never going to happen. So I looked to Yorkshire, where I was from and let it out instead.
I still own it. It's a seven-bed HMO now.
After that I started buying cheap houses in Leeds, doing them up and letting them out, and building the portfolio one property at a time. In 2021 I left my job in PR in London and moved into property full time.
Why HMOs
I lived in them for six years before I owned one. As a student in Nottingham from 2009, then in rooms in London from 2013 — waiting on repairs that never came, ringing an agent who didn't ring back, basic houses with standard decor.
Most people who manage shared houses have never lived in one. I spent six years in them, and I remember exactly which small things made a house good to live in and which made it miserable. That is not sentiment. A house people want to stay in is a house that isn't empty, and the difference shows up in the rent roll.
My top advice to landlords is that the detail matters — a rental is a home whether it is an HMO or a standard rental. Being responsive and friendly, decorating like a home, and proactively spending on maintenance saves money in the long run, reducing call-outs, voids and problem tenants.
I still own and run my own portfolio alongside the properties we manage for other landlords. That isn't incidental to how we work — it is the whole basis of it.
We make the same decisions about your property that we make about our own.
What we manage
7
owned properties
6
managed single lets
39
HMO rooms
Across Leeds and York, and the corridor between the two.
We manage a small number of properties well rather than a large number adequately, and we would rather tell you the real figure than a vague one.
Where the name comes from
Leyo is Leeds and York, joined together. We cover both cities, so we made a name out of both.
How we work
We manage a small number of properties well rather than a large number adequately. Every landlord deals with the same person, who knows the property, has usually stood in it, and answers the phone.
We publish our fees in full. We charge on rent collected, not rent contracted. We don't charge set-up fees, renewal fees or exit fees, and if you leave us we stop charging commission entirely rather than continuing to bill on tenants we introduced.
Get in touch
If you have a property in Leeds or York and want an honest view of what it should be earning, we'll give you one.