93 guides on property. Showing the 48 most recent.
Buying, renting out and running a home. These guides put the costs that are easy to forget beside the ones on the listing — transfer duties, notary and agency fees, charges, the energy a building actually uses — and state the assumption behind every quantity so you can re-run it on your own figures.
Ranked by how many pages of this site link to them, not by traffic.
A local two-bedroom move estimates at $954–$1,347. Four boxes ticked on a three-bedroom move — peak week, full packing, two flights, full-value cover — take it from $1,730 to $3,162. Quotes differ on exclusions, not on price.
Camille Laurent · 12 min read
A two-bedroom home comes out at 56 boxes: 14 small, 21 medium, 12 large, 4 wardrobe, 5 dish. The total is the least useful number on the page — here is why the split matters, and what the count leaves out.
Marco Bianchi · 11 min read
The 40 % limit for three or more conductors is not about whether they physically fit. It is about heat and about pulling them in without stripping the insulation — and the moment you use that space, the code takes current away from every conductor in the pipe.
Marco Bianchi · 17 min read
Section area times length times density, for nine profiles and fourteen metals. What the calculator returns, why one figure covers every carbon-steel grade, and the two places its geometry is not the merchant's geometry.
Marco Bianchi · 13 min read
Blocks, base gravel, drainage stone, geogrid and pipe, counted from the calculator's own output. Then the number nobody puts in a materials list: a saturated backfill pushes about 2.2 times as hard as a drained one.
Marco Bianchi · 12 min read
Twice the centre distance plus both circumferences is 36 % too long. Here is the real formula, how the two straight runs and the two arcs actually add up, how far the standard approximation drifts, and what to do with a figure that is not a catalogue length.
Marco Bianchi · 15 min read
Torque does not hold a joint together — preload does, and torque is a poor proxy for it. Here is where 90 % of your effort goes, what the K-factor really is, and why the same 37.84 N·m gives anything from 12.61 kN to 37.84 kN of clamping force.
Marco Bianchi · 14 min read
Bars each way, splice lengths in bar diameters, cover from the edge, and the exact tonnage to order. Run against the calculator, including the two places where its bar count comes out short.
Marco Bianchi · 12 min read
Count pieces first, then linear feet, then board feet. A 2×4 measures 1½ × 3½ inches but is billed on the full 2 × 4 — 34 % of what you pay for is sawdust. Worked from the calculator's real output, with the waste rule it actually applies.
Marco Bianchi · 13 min read
Overpaying earns exactly your mortgage rate, certainly and untaxed. An investment must therefore beat that rate divided by one minus the tax on its return — which at a 3.2 % mortgage means 4.57 % in a French ordinary account and 3.20 % inside the German savings allowance, before any reward for taking risk.
Camille Laurent · 15 min read
Put both on one axis — euros paid per kilowatt-hour a year of permanent saving — and the comparison becomes decidable. The same loft job costs 0.83 euros per kilowatt-hour a year in a 1965 house and 5.00 in a 2005 one, a factor of six. That, and not the age of the building by itself, is what inverts the verdict.
Marco Bianchi · 14 min read
The rule of thumb everyone repeats — one point of rate gap — is not a rule and gets the timing wrong. What decides it is how much interest you have not yet paid, and the three countries answer the cost side in three completely different ways. Here is the arithmetic, computed.
Camille Laurent · 13 min read
France caps the total cost of a mortgage at one third above the market average, insurance included. Portugal caps the monthly repayment at a share of net income — and on 1 August 2026 it cut that share from 50 % to 45 %. Neither ceiling means what the headline percentage suggests.
Camille Laurent · 13 min read
Most of what buyers call the notary's fee is transfer tax, and it is fixed by a department, an autonomous community or a national scale. The genuinely negotiable share is small, and knowing which line it is on is worth more than haggling over the rest. Portugal added a flat 7.5 % rate for non-resident buyers in May 2026.
Marco Bianchi · 12 min read
The percentages written into the deed decide who owns what for as long as the property exists — not who paid the deposit, not who pays the mortgage, not who does the renovation. In France, Spain and Italy the default is the same undivided co-ownership, and it comes with a right that surprises couples: either of you can force a sale.
Marco Bianchi · 11 min read
Furnishing a flat moves it from one tax code to another: 50 % of the rent is written off instead of 30 %, and a landlord on the full regime can depreciate the building. Since 15 February 2025 that depreciation is clawed back on sale, which changes the whole calculation.
Marco Bianchi · 10 min read
Buying beats renting after a number of years, and that number is computable. On the same house, the same loan and the same year, it lands on 6 in Madrid, 7 in France and 8 in Catalonia — purely because of what the purchase costs on the way in. But the purchase cost is not the biggest lever, and this article shows which one is.
Camille Laurent · 13 min read
France tapers the tax on a property gain to zero over twenty-two and then thirty years. Spain does not taper at all for anything bought after 1994. Portugal has no taper either — it has an inflation index and a fifty per cent haircut, which is a different animal entirely.
Camille Laurent · 11 min read
A 13 by 17 ft room is 221 square feet of floor, but carpet comes off a 12 or 15 ft roll, so you buy 255 square feet and bin 34. Here is how to work out the order quantity your supplier will actually invoice.
Marco Bianchi · 8 min read
A 100 percent grade is 45 degrees, not vertical. Percent is rise ÷ run × 100, the angle is the arctangent of the same fraction, and the two are not proportional. Here is the conversion table and the three ways people get it wrong.
Marco Bianchi · 8 min read
Length × width × average depth gives 21,065 gallons for a 32 by 16 ft pool. But average depth only means (shallow + deep) ÷ 2 when the floor slopes evenly, and most pools do not. Here is every shape formula and the correction.
Marco Bianchi · 8 min read
Move in on 18 October at $1,500 a month and you owe $677.42, $700.00 or $690.41 depending on which convention the lease uses. Agree on one before you sign, not after.
Camille Laurent · 6 min read
There is no honest single figure for a renovation. Build it up by work type, accept that labour is the biggest and least predictable line, and hold 10 to 20 percent back for what the survey could not see.
Camille Laurent · 6 min read
The division takes a second; the trap is the area. A listing that looks 6 percent cheaper per square foot turns out to be 17 percent more expensive once both are measured the same way.
Camille Laurent · 6 min read
Loan divided by the lower of price and appraised value. The bands at 80, 90 and 95 percent are where pricing steps — and a valuation that comes in low moves you across one without you touching the deposit.
Camille Laurent · 5 min read
A 110 in rise divided by a 7 in target gives 15.7 risers. You round to 16 and divide again, landing on 6 7/8 in. Here is the whole method, and why the building codes do not agree with each other.
Marco Bianchi · 7 min read
Cap rate is net operating income divided by price — a return that deliberately ignores your mortgage. Here is how to compute it, and why a high one is a warning as often as a bargain.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Rent minus charges minus the loan. On an 80 percent mortgage at 3.5 percent over 25 years, a rental only breaks even from about 7.1 percent gross yield — here is the full calculation.
Camille Laurent · 5 min read
Most of what buyers call notary fees is tax, not the notary. Here is the breakdown on a EUR 250,000 purchase and why an older home costs three times more to transfer than a new one.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Work out the concrete for setting fence posts: hole volume minus the post, converted into bags of ready-mix, with the rule of thumb for hole depth and width.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read
A capital gain on property is the profit when you sell for more than you paid, minus your costs. Learn how it is calculated and why primary-residence rules matter.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Count wallpaper rolls correctly when the pattern repeats: how repeat length creates waste on every strip, and how to turn wall area into the number of rolls to buy.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read
Add up energy, water, heating, and maintenance with simple rules of thumb so you know what a home really costs to run each month.
Camille Laurent · 5 min read
Turn your viewing distance into a recommended screen diagonal in inches, so a 4K TV fills your field of view without straining your eyes.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read
Three fair ways to split rent — equally, by room size, or by income — with worked examples so nobody feels shortchanged.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
One acre is about 4,047 square metres; a hectare is exactly 10,000. Learn the conversions and how land-area units relate.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read
Compare fixed and variable rate mortgages on certainty, cost, and risk, and see which suits your budget, timeline, and tolerance for change.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Multiply the heater's kilowatts by hours used and your price per kWh — a 1.5 kW heater for 5 hours a day adds up fast at typical tariffs.
Marco Bianchi · 5 min read
Learn why a loan costs far more than the amount borrowed, how total interest builds over the term, and why a longer term means paying more.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Divide the appliance wattage by the supply voltage to get the current in amps — the number that decides breaker size, wire, and what can share a circuit.
Marco Bianchi · 5 min read
Understand the 33% to 43% debt-to-income limits lenders use, how they calculate the ratio, and what to do if yours is too high.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Pick wire size from the load current, run length, and allowed voltage drop — the amps decide the minimum cross-section, distance forces you thicker.
Marco Bianchi · 5 min read
See how overpaying a mortgage cuts total interest and shortens the term, and when investing the same money might beat paying the loan down faster.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Match tank size to household size and peak-hour demand: roughly 40–50 gallons for two people, more as bathrooms and simultaneous use grow.
Marco Bianchi · 5 min read
Add the down payment to closing and moving costs to get a real savings target, then work out the monthly amount that reaches it by your deadline.
Camille Laurent · 4 min read
Size a generator by listing the appliances you must run, adding their running watts, and allowing headroom for the surge when motors start.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read
Renting vs buying, compared honestly: the break-even horizon, the opportunity cost of a down payment, and the situations where each option wins.
Camille Laurent · 3 min read
Size a heater from room area and your climate: a BTU-per-square-foot rule gives the heat output, with watts and kW for electric units.
Marco Bianchi · 4 min read