A decade ago, in 2012, Alisa Zotimova registered A Z Real Estate Limited, and this year we are celebrating our anniversary! In October we invited our clients, partners, colleagues and friends to share our celebration in one of the most prestigious private clubs in London - Savile club. Over the years, Alisa's brainchild has grown into a strong, independent full-stack real estate agency with over...

Buying property in the UK is a complex and time-consuming process that comes with additional costs and taxes. In this article, we talk about the aspects of taxation in the UK in relation to purchasing, owning and selling a property. All information presented here describes the situation as of July 2022. In this article, we cannot and do not attempt to cover all possible taxation options associated...

Many of the events that we are experiencing in 2022 are unprecedented in every sense: political, social, and economic. The global economy is in turmoil. How will this affect the UK property market? We share our thoughts in this article. In recent months, we have seen an unfolding inflation shock around the world, which has arisen due to a combination of several factors: The breakdown of...

Interview of Alisa Zotimova to Financial Times. Sanctions imposed since the attack on Ukraine have complicated deals, with estate agents under pressure to scrutinise funds. Alisa Zotimova was looking forward this March to completing a typical transaction for her estate agency business, which caters mainly to Russian speakers. Her Moscow-based client was buying a flat in Westminster, central...

We witness high activity in the property market both for sales and for lettings and believe that it will continue in the near future. This is a normal situation: after the winter lull, the market usually picks up steam by spring when both buyers and sellers rush to make a deal before the summer holidays. In such an intense environment, clients begin to appreciate the service of property...

SALES In our previous articles, we discussed how the UK real estate market behaved in 2021. The year ended with a slight decrease in demand in December, but by January, new buyers were setting new records in terms of the number of applications. This demand has not gone away yet and continues to put pressure on prices. According to Zoopla, the average house prices in the UK rose by 8.4% in May...

The fast growth of industrial dark kitchens is one of the largest changes we're seeing in the commercial real estate market following the pandemic. Dark kitchen is a concept of setting up a catering service for takeaways only. Delivery orders are placed online – through an application or website. The largest apps of prepared meals delivery in the UK are Uber Eats, Just Eat, Deliveroo. These services...

Last summer, we wrote about the boom in the UK residential property market and its prerequisites. Today we will talk about the results of 2021 and what has changed by the beginning of 2022. UK and London After a slight decline in December, in early 2022, the demand for housing in the UK shot up again. The influx of buyers in January was 49% higher than the average for the same period of 2018-2021,...

Nearly two weeks on, we asked prime property insiders – including those who specialise in Russian clients – about what effect anti-war sanctions are really having on the London property market, and how their businesses are being affected… It’s been nearly two weeks since the UK, EU, US and many other nations imposed a first tranche of economic sanctions against Russia, in response to the...

The book “From Moscow to London. Notes on happiness and business” by a new Russian-British author Alisa Zotimova launched in Moscow in December last year. A non-fiction hardcover was published in Russia by Alpina Pro (part of the prominent Alpina Publisher family) and came out simultaneously in e-book and audiobook. London, England, 2021. The protagonist (also the author as it’s an autobiography)...