Naomi Isted is the creator and host of Relocation or Vacation and principal of Isted Consultancy. One of the few figures in the British media landscape with experience spanning television, luxury design and international property, she has built a career at the intersection of lifestyle, investment and high-end living.
As a television presenter, Naomi has appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and This Morning, served as E! Entertainment’s Fashion Guru and red-carpet host, and partnered with hayu and the E! Network on major events and programming. Her work has been recognised by publications including British Vogue, The New York Times, ELLE, HELLO! and the Daily Mail.
Alongside her media career, Naomi has spent more than two decades advising globally recognised luxury brands. She received the Excellence in Interior Design Award from Westminster’s Parliamentary Society in 2022 and previously led a division at Nest Seekers International across the UK. Today, she oversees a personal advisory pipeline valued at more than £5 billion globally, including more than 450 units across Cyprus’s most prestigious developments.
The Luxury Report is delighted to be collaborating with Naomi, giving readers access to her expertise across luxury property, interior design and international relocation. To mark the partnership, we caught up with her to learn more about Relocation or Vacation and to gain her insights into Cyprus’s evolving luxury property market.
Please introduce our readers to Relocation or Vacation. What’s the inspiration behind the series, and who is it aimed at?
Naomi Isted: Relocation or Vacation was born from a conversation I kept having, not once or twice, but constantly, with some of the most successful people I know. They weren’t asking me about holiday homes anymore. They were asking where they should actually be based. Where their children could grow up safely. Where their money worked harder. Where they could have the life they actually wanted, rather than the one that had just happened to them.
That question – relocate, or vacation? – is the defining lifestyle question of our moment for affluent families. And there was no premium, authoritative content addressing it properly. Everything out there was either a tourist board video or a dry financial explainer. Nobody was doing what I do in real life, which is holding the whole conversation: the aesthetics, the investment rationale, the lifestyle reality on the ground, the interior story of actually building a home somewhere new.
The series is for UK and international high-net-worth families, entrepreneurs and investors who are actively rethinking where they want to be based – and who want a trusted guide across the entire decision, not just the headline numbers. We’re on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, and every episode ends on a real property or lifestyle opportunity that viewers can act on.
Relocation or Vacation sits at the intersection of property, design, media and lifestyle. Looking back across your career, which experiences have proved most valuable in shaping the series?
The honest answer is all of it – but perhaps not in the way people might expect. It isn’t the television presenting or the property advisory work in isolation. It’s twenty years of being trusted by people who don’t trust easily.
When you’re designing the interior of someone’s principal residence – not a holiday home, their actual home – you are deep inside their life. You understand their family dynamics, what they value, what makes them feel safe and genuinely at home. And when you’re advising those same people on which country to invest in, which development is genuinely sound versus merely beautiful, what the legal and residency picture looks like in practice, that’s an extraordinary level of trust.
My clients don’t separate those conversations. The aesthetics, the investment rationale, the lifestyle reality on the ground – it all happens in the same breath. I’m one of the very few people who can be a credible voice across all of it. Relocation or Vacation is built on exactly that.
Many people are connected to the luxury property sector through the media, but far fewer advise clients directly. How does that practical experience shape your perspective?
I think there is a particular kind of authority that can only be earned by actually doing the work. Not studying it, not commenting on it from the sidelines, but being directly involved in the decisions people make with their money, their homes and their futures.
Over the years, I’ve built relationships across a global property network worth more than £5 billion, spanning luxury residences, hotel investments, student accommodation and major development opportunities. I’ve advised clients on everything from lifestyle-led investments and international relocation to long-term property strategy, and that gives you a very different perspective from simply observing the market.
What interests me most is the intersection between aspiration and execution. It’s one thing to talk about a destination, a development or an investment opportunity, it’s another to understand how it performs in the real world and whether it’s genuinely right for a client. My background in television, luxury interiors and international property allows me to bring those perspectives together, and that’s very much the foundation of Relocation or Vacation.
You talk about people redesigning their lives, not just their homes. What’s been the biggest shift you’ve noticed in how affluent families and entrepreneurs define luxury today?
The definition has completely changed. For a long time, luxury meant acquisition – the house, the car, the label, the status signal. That still exists, but it is no longer the primary driver for genuinely wealthy people. What I hear now, consistently, is about time, freedom and safety.
Safety – which sounds like a low bar until you’re raising children and you realise it isn’t. Freedom – the genuine kind, not the aspirational poster version. The ability to move, to structure a life intelligently, to not feel trapped by geography or circumstance. And time – because the most successful people I work with have understood that time is the only truly finite resource, and they are increasingly unwilling to spend it tolerating a life they’ve outgrown.
Luxury has changed. People still want the beautiful home, the elevated experience. But they also want wellness, sunshine, safety and space. A life that feels designed, not defaulted into. That’s what I’m building this platform around.
The series follows affluent families, investors and entrepreneurs exploring life abroad. What have you learned most about these people? Is there a common thread that connects them?
The common thread is that they’ve done the thinking. These are not impulsive people. By the time someone is having this conversation with me, they’ve already been quietly researching it for longer than they would care to admit. They’ve thought about what it would mean for their business, their partner, their lifestyle, their children.
What they need from me isn’t more information – they have plenty of that. What they need is someone who has been there, who understands the emotional reality as much as the practical one, and who can tell them honestly what it’s actually like when you actually do it. The research phase and the living-it phase are very different experiences. I can speak to both.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that once one person in a social or professional circle makes the move successfully, others follow surprisingly quickly. There’s a permission-giving quality to it. Someone they respect did it and it worked. Suddenly it becomes imaginable.
We noticed a feature on your website titled ‘Why Cyprus is the smartest property move in Europe right now’. What makes the island stand out in such a competitive international market?
Cyprus occupies a genuinely unique position – and I say that having looked closely at Portugal, Spain, the UAE, Malta and Monaco. What it offers simply doesn’t exist elsewhere at the same level of accessibility.
It’s a full EU member state with a common-law legal system, which is immediately familiar and reassuring for British buyers. The route to European permanent residency through property investment is well established, efficient and considerably faster than most people expect. The legal infrastructure is robust and internationally respected.
But the fundamentals of the island itself are what seal it. Among the lowest crime rates in Europe. Over three hundred days of sunshine a year. Blue-flag beaches. World-class international schools and private healthcare. Direct daily flights from London. English spoken at a professional level throughout. For a British family seriously evaluating their options, the checklist writes itself.
What I always tell people is to go and spend ten days there before making any decisions. Because the case is compelling on paper – but it’s the life you fall in love with.
Which types of opportunities in Cyprus are attracting the most interest from international buyers right now?
We’re seeing strong demand across two distinct profiles. The first is the lifestyle-led family buyer, who is typically UK or European, looking for a principal or secondary residence with genuine liveability, strong schooling nearby, and a property that works as a long-term home. For this buyer, the western coast around Pafos is enormously popular. It boasts stunning scenery, a welcoming international community, and a range of property options from well-positioned apartments to extraordinary beachfront villas.
The second profile is the investment-led buyer – often an entrepreneur or business owner who wants Cyprus property as both a residency anchor and a long-term capital asset. For these buyers, the premium developments in Limassol and signature resort projects like Venus Rock Golf Resort represent exceptional quality relative to comparable product anywhere in western Europe.
Across Pafos, Limassol, Larnaca, Nicosia and Protaras, my advisory portfolio spans over 450 units. I work with buyers to match them to the right development, the right location and the right structure for their specific situation, because the right home for one family looks nothing like the right home for another.
What is it about Cyprus that people only really understand once they’ve spent time living there?
The pace, and what it does to you. This sounds like a lifestyle cliché until you experience it, and then it becomes the thing everyone talks about. There is a quality of day-to-day life in Cyprus that simply does not exist in London or Dubai in the same way. The combination of the climate, the physical beauty of the island, the safety, the warmth of the community – it recalibrates something in you.
People who visit on holiday always say it’s beautiful and relaxing. People who actually live there, even for three months, come back different. Less stressed, more present, clearer about what matters. I’ve watched it happen to clients, to friends, and to myself.
The other thing nobody tells you about until you’re inside it is the community of international relocators that has built up, particularly around Pafos and Limassol. British families, European entrepreneurs, internationally-minded professionals who have all made the same considered choice. That network is one of the great hidden advantages of the move.
Many people dream about living abroad, but far fewer actually make the move. In your experience, what holds people back – and what advice would you give to families considering taking that leap?
Three things consistently hold people back. The first is logistics paralysis – there are so many moving parts to an international relocation that the whole thing becomes overwhelming and people stall indefinitely. The second is social inertia – leaving friends, family and a comfortable, familiar life, even when that life isn’t making them happy. The third, and this one is rarely spoken aloud, is fear that it might actually work. That they might get there, love it, and realise they could have done it years earlier.
My advice is always the same: don’t try to solve the whole problem at once. Go and spend two weeks there properly, not as a tourist. Stay in a residential area, use a local market, meet people, walk through the schools, have dinner with expat families who have already done it. And work with someone who has helped hundreds of people through this process and can help you sequence the decisions correctly. The families who thrive are those who treat relocation as a project to be managed, not a leap to be taken blind. You need the right team around you – a property advisor, a legal firm with international experience, perhaps an interior designer who can make the new home feel genuinely yours from day one. That is exactly what I help people build.
And for investors, what are the key factors they should be paying attention to? And what are the most common mistakes to avoid?
The key factors are developer track record, thorough legal due diligence, and understanding what you’re actually acquiring, not just the property itself, but the residency and lifestyle structure around it. Cyprus has a common-law system which makes the legal process genuinely familiar for British investors, but that is not a reason to cut corners. Title deeds, planning permissions, the developer’s completion history, these are non-negotiable. I see buyers fall in love with a property and want to move quickly. The discipline to do it properly is what separates a great outcome from a costly one.
The most common mistake? Buying in the wrong location for their actual lifestyle. Cyprus is a diverse island and different regions suit very different buyers entirely. An investor focused on prime city-facing development needs different guidance to a family seeking beach-walk liveability in a resort community. I’ve spent years building the on-the-ground knowledge and developer relationships to make that match correctly – and the difference to both the experience and the long-term outcome is considerable.
Relocation or Vacation isn’t just content. It’s a bridge. People watch, fall in love with a destination, and then they have real questions. Where exactly should I be looking? Which developer can I trust? What does the process actually look like? That’s where twenty years of doing this properly becomes everything.
Further information
For property introductions, design insight and international relocation expertise contact naomi@naomikisted.com. Follow @NaomiKisted on Instagram and TikTok, and @RelocationorVaction on YouTube – relocationorvacation.com
