Tenant Jill is one of a shocking number of over-65s forced to live in a House in Multiple Occupation (HMO), and Carl and his family are among the growing number of young families who can never hope to own their own home.

Landlord and property investor Nick has come far since his humble beginnings on a council estate in Barnsley. He's made the most of high rental yields in his South Yorkshire hometown and now lives in a five-bed barn conversion with ten acres of land with his wife Sarah their two young children.

One hundred miles away in Peterborough, landlord and developer Yvonne and her husband Andy have built up a multimillion-pound property portfolio with their successful business strategy of buying up derelict properties and transforming them into HMOs. They live in a 22-room Victorian mansion in Peterborough with their two children. Yvonne's latest venture is to build five detached houses in her back garden.

For Yorkshire landlord Nick it's been over seven years since he has stepped foot in any of his rentals, having delegated all the management to his lettings agency. Now, in order to reconnect with his roots, Nick and his family are moving into the home of his tenants Carl and Sarah. Owing to a huge demand in rental property, finding a family home to rent isn't easy, so when this three-bed end-of-terrace came on the market, Carl snapped it up, despite the rent being over half his monthly pay.

Carl has spent his own time and money on trying to make the house a home, but worrying him desperately is the lack of security given that the length of the tenancy agreement is only 12 months. Rocketing house prices, wage freezes and tighter lending policies make home ownership harder than ever to achieve, and Carl can't see a day when he might own his own home. On the other hand, Nick and Sarah firmly believe that background and circumstance don't affect your ability to make money and, with hard work, anyone can do it.

As her property empire has grown, Yvonne has delegated all the management of her rentals. In order to reconnect, she swaps her eight-bed mansion for the attic room in this shared house, home to pensioner Jill. Part of the reason Yvonne mainly deals with HMOs is because, with all the changes in taxes and fees, they make more money than single lets. But with increasing rental prices forcing more and more renters to share, is the HMO model fit for everyone?

At 64, Jill is retired and living in the attic room of one of Yvonne's six-bed shared houses in Peterborough, where she has been for the past four years. Every day she has to climb up and down two sets of narrow stairs, made worse because she suffers from piriformis, a debilitating and painful condition in her legs.

Jill would love to own her own place, but one-bedroom places are hard to find and come with a price tag that Jill - on housing benefits and pension - can't afford. Instead she pays £475 for a room in this shared house. She feels stuck and helpless and hopes that her landlord will see that her situation is far from ideal. Show less