A lease is a countdown. Buying a leasehold flat means buying the right to live there for a fixed number of years, and every year that passes makes the asset slightly less valuable and slightly more expensive to fix. Most of the time this is irrelevant background. Below a certain number of years it stops being background and starts being the main financial fact about the property.
This guide covers England and Wales, where the statutory framework applies. Scotland effectively abolished residential long leases and Northern Ireland works differently again.
The three numbers
90 years and above. Comfortable. Worth noting on the file and forgetting about.
Below 80 years. This is the threshold that matters, and it is worth understanding why. When you extend a lease you pay the freeholder a premium. Below 80 years, that premium includes marriage value: the idea that extending the lease creates value which did not exist before, and that the freeholder is entitled to half of it. The premium does not rise smoothly as you cross 80. It steps.
If a listing says 82 years, that is not a comfortable number. It is a two year window.
Below 70 years. Mortgage availability starts to narrow. Lender rules vary, but a common shape is a minimum number of years remaining at completion, plus a requirement that the term runs a few decades past the end of the mortgage. A 65 year lease and a 30 year mortgage fails that arithmetic at most high street lenders. This matters even if you are a cash buyer, because the person you eventually sell to probably is not.
What the listing will and won't tell you
Tenure and remaining term are material information, so a compliant listing gives you the years. What it does not give you is everything that decides whether those years are a problem:
- The ground rent, and whether it escalates. A fixed £50 is trivia. A rent that doubles every ten years is a defect serious enough to make a flat difficult to mortgage. Leases granted from 30 June 2022 are limited to a peppercorn rent under the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, but that did nothing for existing leases, and existing leases are what you are buying.
- The service charge, and what is coming. The current annual figure tells you less than the building's ten year plan. A section 20 consultation notice already issued for roof works is a bill with your name on it if you complete first.
- Who the freeholder is. A resident management company behaves differently from an investment landlord who bought the freehold as an income stream.
- Building safety. For flats in blocks with cladding or other fire safety issues, remediation status and the protections in the Building Safety Act 2022 change both cost and saleability.
Where leasehold reform has actually got to
This is the part where most of what you read online is out of date, so it is worth being precise about what is in force as at August 2026.
In force. The two year ownership requirement was abolished on 31 January 2025. You can now start a statutory lease extension or freehold purchase as soon as you own the flat. Right to manage reforms followed in March 2025, making it easier for leaseholders to take over management of their building.
Not in force. The valuation reforms. That includes the abolition of marriage value, the increase of the statutory extension term for flats from 90 years to 990 years, and the change to who pays the freeholder's costs. These need secondary legislation. Freeholders challenged the reforms on human rights grounds, lost in the High Court in October 2025, and were granted permission to appeal in April 2026, with a hearing expected late 2026 or into 2027.
The practical consequence for a buyer today: marriage value is still payable, the statutory extension for a flat is still 90 years on top of the existing term, and waiting for reform is a bet with no published date attached. Meanwhile the lease keeps getting shorter and the premium keeps rising.
Extending: the two routes
The statutory route. A qualifying leaseholder serves a section 42 notice. For a flat, this gets you 90 years added to the remaining term and the ground rent reduced to a peppercorn. The premium is set by a formula, and if you and the freeholder cannot agree, the First-tier Tribunal decides. It is slower and more formal, and it is the route with actual protections.
The informal route. You ask the freeholder, they name a price, you negotiate. It can be faster and cheaper. It also has no statutory framework, which means the freeholder can attach terms: a shorter extension than you would get statutorily, or a ground rent that carries on rather than dropping to a peppercorn. Have a solicitor read what is offered before you agree to anything on this route.
If you are buying a flat with a short lease
Do these three things, in this order, before you make an offer.
- Find the actual remaining term. Not the listing's rounded number. The lease's start date and length are in the Land Registry title, and a copy of the title costs a few pounds. A lease "granted 1 January 1965 for 99 years" has 38 years left, not the "long lease" the particulars imply.
- Get a valuation of the extension premium. A surveyor who specialises in leasehold enfranchisement will give you a range. On a short lease this is the single most useful few hundred pounds you will spend, because it converts a vague worry into a number you can take off your offer.
- Decide who serves the notice. Either ask the seller to serve a section 42 notice before completion and assign the benefit of it to you, which fixes the valuation date and lets you complete the extension yourself, or serve it yourself after completion now that the two year wait is gone. The first option is usually worth negotiating for, because the premium only grows while you wait.
Where this fits
Lease length is one of the checks Rooph runs on any listing you paste, alongside flood risk, planning history and sold comparables in the same street. It reports the remaining term, the ground rent and service charge where they are published, and the clauses that tend to cause trouble later.
See a full sample report, or start with what a listing doesn't tell you.
This guide is general information about how leasehold works, not legal advice on your purchase. On a lease under 80 years, get a specialist solicitor and a valuation before you commit.