Articles by Lizaveta Herman
How long does it take to sell a rented home with vacant possession in England
A rented home in England takes about six months to sell with vacant possession if the tenant leaves on time, and about a year if they wait for bailiffs. Ground 1A needs 4 months' notice; courts take a median 27.1 weeks. On a £206,000 Leeds terrace, waiting beats a 10% tenanted discount by £13,500 to £19,300.
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Does an EPC C upgrade pay back on a £90,000 northern terrace
For a £90,000 terrace renting at £650 a month, the EPC C cap falls to £9,000 because the home sits below £100,000. Sam nets about £1,500 a year after costs and tax, so the upgrade eats up to six years of income. A 1.8% rent premium for EPC C adds only £140 a year, so the case rests on compliance.
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Autumn Budget 2026: The Tax Rise Costs Landlords £118. The Rate Rise Costs £1,053
The Budget lands on 28 October, but for a typical mortgaged landlord it is not the biggest threat to net yield. We ran one Yorkshire buy-to-let through every confirmed change and the main rumours.
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How much of a Section 13 rent increase will a tribunal approve
We read the first 25 published Section 13 tribunal decisions under the Renters’ Rights Act. Half gave landlords the full increase, while six landlords got a quarter or less. Achieved-rent evidence won every time it appeared. A worked example shows why an inflated notice costs a landlord more than it earns.
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What 6% mortgage rates do to a buy-to-let deal
The average five-year fixed mortgage hit 6% on 5 October, and sub-5% deals fell from 1,494 to nine in a month. We run a £200,000 buy-to-let through the lender stress test and the tax bill. A higher-rate landlord now needs £28,600 more deposit on a two-year fix and loses money after tax.
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Liverpool flats gross 7.3% against 6.1% for terraces, yet terraces net more
Liverpool flats gross 7.3% on ONS averages, more than a point above terraces. Once service charges, licensing and a 5.47% mortgage come in, the order flips. We run both from gross to net and price the city's next licensing scheme.
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Larnaca costs 43% less than Limassol. Its rents run 48% lower
Larnaca contracts jumped 35% in August while Limassol slipped for the first time in 2026. Larnaca resale flats cost 43% less per square metre, yet two-bedroom rents run at half Limassol's level. We take a 75m² flat in each city from gross to net and price the €415m marina plan for today's buyer.
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Where Manchester buy-to-let yields actually sit in 2026
Fallowfield terraces gross 7% to 8% while Manchester city-centre flats gross anywhere from 4.5% to 6.6% depending on who you ask. The bigger problem is the £4,447 average service charge in tall blocks, which turns a 5.3% gross yield into 3.8% before a single repair. We run the numbers across Fallowfield, Levenshulme and Salford.
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How to price title deed risk in Cyprus
Cyprus sold more property in 2025 than in any year since 2007, yet thousands of paid-up buyers still hold no title deed. We trace how the backlog formed and what the 2025 trapped buyers law changes, then set out how a buyer should price deed risk before signing.
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Birmingham's HS2 premium went to the wrong postcodes
Birmingham spent a decade selling an HS2 premium around Curzon Street and Digbeth. Land Registry data shows city flats gained 36 per cent in ten years while ordinary terraces gained 60 per cent, and B1 sold prices now sit a quarter below their 2023 peak. We audit what the hype did to prices and rents, and where the underwriting maths clears in 2026.
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What the tech migration did to Limassol's rental market
Cyprus issued 48,212 residence permits under its tech attraction strategy between January 2023 and August 2024, and most of the arrivals settled in Limassol. Average asking rents there hit €3,057 a month in July 2025 against a median Cypriot wage of €1,968. We look at what that did to the market, and who pays for it.
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The two council maps that decide whether an HMO conversion works
Article 4 directions now decide whether an HMO conversion is possible at all. We work through the licensing and planning maths in Nottingham, Birmingham and Bristol, including the six-ward Bristol deadline that arrives on 1 January 2027.
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Paphos or Larnaca? What a Cyprus short let really earns
Cyprus set records in 2025 for tourist arrivals and airport traffic, then bookings turned sharply in spring 2026. We compare Paphos and Larnaca on a single year of booking data, licensing compliance and entry prices, and put a realistic gross annual figure on each.
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What a 9% gross yield in the North East actually pays
Fleet Mortgages puts the North East's average gross yield at 9.8 per cent and Zoopla ranks Sunderland top of all UK cities. We work a £70,000 Hartlepool terrace from 9.6 per cent gross down to roughly 5.2 per cent net, then look at the capex and exit risks that decide whether even that number survives.
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Cyprus's €300k residency rule has split the housing market in two
Cyprus grants permanent residency for a €300,000 property investment, but only first sales from developers qualify. That single clause funnels visa demand into new-builds and leaves the resale market to everyone else. We put the two data series side by side to see what the gap means for exit values.
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What EPC C by 2030 costs, and how to price it into a purchase
The January 2026 government response settled the rules: every rented home in England and Wales needs EPC C by October 2030, with a £10,000 cost cap. We look at what a C actually costs on pre-1919 terraces and how to price the risk into a purchase.
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Leamington Spa and the case for the mid-market Midlands town
Warwick district rents run 28% above the West Midlands average, yet naive yield maths still favours Birmingham. An honest look at Leamington Spa's CV31 and CV32 market, from Warwick University demand and Silicon Spa wages to what the commuter arithmetic actually pays for.
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The Renters' Rights Act and the Quiet Death of the Hobby Landlord
The Renters' Rights Act is the biggest reset of the UK private rented sector in three decades. Section 21 is gone, fixed-term tenancies are gone, and the Decent Homes Standard is coming. The headline framing is about tenant protection. The structural effect is something different: an exodus of small landlords and the steady professionalisation of who actually owns Britain's rental stock.
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BRRR vs Buy-to-Let in 2026: Which UK Strategy Actually Wins?
Both BTL and BRRR have spent the last decade defending themselves as the only sensible UK property strategy. Both are right and wrong in particular conditions. Here is the actual maths in 2026, with current mortgage rates, refurbishment costs, and rental yields, on which one builds wealth faster and where each one breaks.
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88 Percent of Real Estate Firms Are Piloting AI. Only 5 Percent Hit Their Goals.
The commercial real estate industry has stampeded into AI adoption. The results so far are sobering: a JLL survey of 150 firms found that only 5 percent achieved all their programme goals. The problem is not the technology. It is the data, the expectations, and the organisational plumbing underneath.
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How AI Is Reshaping Property Markets Without Touching a Single Building
The biggest way AI changes real estate is not through proptech tools. It is through its effect on labour markets, capital flows, and energy infrastructure. Data centres are crowding out housing. White-collar job displacement threatens mortgage markets. And the investors who see these second-order effects first will be the ones who get positioning right.
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Computer Vision, Zoning Bots, and Carbon Audits: The Boring AI That Actually Works in Property
The AI applications generating real results in real estate are not the ones that make headlines. They are condition-scoring algorithms that match appraiser ratings with 0.82 correlation. Zoning compliance tools that compress permit timelines from six months to six days. Carbon audit systems that plan retrofits a hundred times faster than consultants. The boring stuff works. Here is how.
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The Real Estate Agent Industry in 2026: A Global Snapshot
The global real estate brokerage industry now generates over $200 billion in annual commissions across roughly 27 million working agents. Headline numbers that big can hide where the money and the leverage actually sit. This is what the agent industry looks like in 2026, who is winning, and where the next shake-out is coming from.
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A £400,000 Four-Bed in London: What the Numbers Say
A 4-bed apartment in Streatham, London, underwritten end to end: rent evidence, financial projection, and comparables.
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This London House Rents Below Every Comparable. Bargain or Trap?
This NW2 house rents for less per square metre than every comparable on our list. That makes it either an underpriced value-add play or a property the rental market already marked down.
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2-bed semi-detached, Agioi Vavatsinias, Larnaca: 8.3% yield, 14.2% IRR
A 2-bed semi-detached in Agioi Vavatsinias, Larnaca, underwritten end to end: rent evidence, financial projection, and comparables.
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