Project Railway: How We 6x'd the Rent (And Pulled Most of Our Capital Back)
This large semi-detached property in Rugby's town centre would typically rent for around £900pcm. Today it brings in £5,600pcm — six times that. Here's how we got there.
Photo by Abacus Property Group (Project Railway development, 2024)
The property everyone else saw as "just another terrace"
We picked up Project Railway in 2022 — a four-storey Victorian end-terrace, split into four bedrooms and two reception rooms, with sitting tenants already in place. It needed work, and it wasn't much to look at. What caught our eye was the location: minutes from Rugby train station, walking distance to cafés and shops, a generous layout, and more than one way in — the kind of detail most buyers wouldn't think twice about.
We didn't. The bones of the building — size, position, and structure — gave us everything we needed to turn a tired family home into something far more valuable.
This one also came to us off-market, through a contact we'd worked with before in real estate sales. We viewed it once, saw the potential straight away, and agreed a price before it ever reached the open market. That kind of access doesn't happen by chance — it comes from a track record of being straightforward to deal with, which counts for a lot when a good deal needs to move fast.
Going up, not out
Rather than extending outward, we went up. A full loft conversion added two extra rooms, and we reconfigured the internal layout to take the property from four bedrooms to seven — every single one with its own ensuite, and four of those built out as full studio rooms, complete with their own kitchens.
That's really the change that made the numbers work. A four-bed house let as a single family home brings in one rent cheque a month. Seven individually let rooms bring in seven — each one earning on its own, at a rate the whole house together never could.
Photo by Abacus Property Group (Project Railway, 2024)
Getting there wasn't just a case of adding walls. Squeezing tea stations into ensuites without eating into space or drainage runs meant designing bespoke slimline units and routing pipework carefully around the existing structure. The loft brought its own headache too — original roof pitch limitations meant less headroom than we'd hoped for, so we reworked the layout with our architect and structural engineer to keep the space usable without pushing the building height up. What came out the other end is a bright, modern loft studio that still ticks every regulatory box.
We also built in a few things you won't see on a viewing but will feel in the running costs: insulation on external walls, under a new concrete floor, and hot/cold water isolation valves in every ensuite so maintenance never has to disrupt the rest of the house. Small decisions now, lower bills and easier upkeep for years to come.
Fire safety and compliance ran alongside all of it. We kept building control involved at every key stage — structural changes, the loft works, fire strategy — with a pre-commencement meeting to align expectations before a single wall came down. New fire doors, comprehensive smoke detection, and clear escape routes went in without compromising the finish we were after. It meant a few on-the-spot adjustments along the way, but it also meant no delays at sign-off.
Designed for how people actually want to live
Photo by Abacus Property Group (Project Railway, 2024)
Every room is fully furnished, so a tenant can move in with a suitcase and nothing else. Bills are all-inclusive — the only thing tenants think about is their room rent. It's priced and finished for the top end of the HMO market, and that shows in the demand we've seen for it — and in what each room can command compared to renting the house as a whole.
Photo by Abacus Property Group (Project Railway, 2024)
Rugby doesn't have a university, so there's no student demand to lean on. What it does have is a strong professional workforce and a location that punches well above its weight — a fast train gets you into Birmingham or Milton Keynes in 25 minutes, and London in under an hour. That makes it a genuine commuter town, and our tenant profile reflects it: young working professionals who want a well-finished room without the hassle of setting up a whole flat.
We already had a good read on this demand before we even bought the property. As investors and developers based in the town, we'd seen firsthand how limited the supply of genuinely high-quality co-living space was against how many people wanted it. There was a gap in the market, and we knew Railway could fill it.
The numbers
This is the part that gets people's attention.
Seven rooms, each let individually and priced for the premium end of the market, is what turns £900pcm into £5,600pcm. It's not one big rent hike on the same house — it's the same building generating income seven times over instead of once.
We ran this as a Buy, Refurbish, Refinance, Rent (BRRR) deal, which means the exit wasn't a sale — it was a remortgage at the property's new, much higher valuation. That let us pull back the bulk of our original investment, freeing up capital to go again on the next project.
That's really the heart of Project Railway. The rent uplift is the headline number, but the real win is what it makes possible afterwards — capital that would otherwise be locked in bricks and mortar, recycled into the next deal instead.
Recognised, not just by us
Project Railway was named a finalist for Best Residential to HMO Conversion at the 2025 HMO Awards, and picked up a regional win at the LABC Awards 2025 for Best Conversion or Alteration to an Existing Home. It's the same off-market deal and two-phase planning strategy that took the property from C3 to C4 to Sui Generis, put through the kind of scrutiny most HMO conversions never see.
We're Abacus Property Group, and we deliver end-to-end HMO and BTL projects across the West Midlands for investors who want returns like Project Railway’s— without managing the build, the planning, or the headaches themselves. Get in touch if you'd like to know more.
