Leasehold ownership can feel unnecessarily complicated. The length and wording of the lease, service charges, building management and the freeholder’s role can all affect what you pay, what you can do with your home and how easily you can sell or remortgage it.
These practical guides explain residential leasehold law in England and Wales in plain English. Whether you are concerned about a short lease, challenging service charges, buying the freehold or dealing with a missing landlord, choose the subject closest to your situation below.
Understanding leasehold property
Start here for a clear explanation of leasehold ownership, how it differs from freehold and the particular issues to consider when buying or owning a leasehold home.
Restrictions on using your leasehold home
Practical guidance on lease covenants affecting everyday life in a flat, including restrictions on pets and short-term letting, when the freeholder’s written consent may be required and what happens if the lease prohibits what you want to do.
- Can a freeholder ban pets in a leasehold flat? Your rights explained
- Can I Airbnb my leasehold flat? Short-term letting and freeholder consent explained
Alterations and improving your flat
Practical guidance on making changes to a leasehold home, when the freeholder’s consent may be required and what happens if alterations were carried out without permission.
- Can I make alterations to a leasehold flat? Freeholder consent explained
- Can I install air conditioning in a leasehold flat? Freeholder consent and planning permission explained
Lease length and extending your lease
Guidance on why the remaining length of a lease matters, when a lease may begin to affect value or mortgageability and how the lease-extension process works.
- Is a 125 year lease long enough?
- Lease extension in England and Wales: Costs, process and the 80-year rule
Service charges and poor building management
Practical guidance on service charges, major works, buildings insurance and poor management, including the rights and remedies available when charges appear unreasonable or a building is not being managed properly.
- Service charges explained: What leaseholders can challenge in England and Wales
- Received a Section 20 notice? Leaseholder rights and how to challenge major works costs
- Leasehold buildings insurance: Can you challenge an excessive premium or commission?
- Freeholder not carrying out repairs? What leaseholders can do
- Appointment of a manager in leasehold property: Section 24 explained
Taking control and buying the freehold
Explore the principal ways leaseholders can gain greater control over their building, either by taking over its management or by joining together to purchase the freehold.
- Right to Manage: How leaseholders can take control
- Collective enfranchisement: How to buy your building’s freehold
Problems with the lease or freeholder
Guidance on defective lease terms, missing landlords and situations where the freeholding company has been dissolved and ownership has passed to the Crown.
- Deed of variation of a lease: How to fix a defective lease
- Absent landlord: What to do when your freeholder is missing
- Bona Vacantia property: What happens when a freehold company is dissolved?
Leasehold houses and lesser-known rights
Information about leasehold houses and less familiar legal routes through which certain long leaseholders may be able to acquire freehold ownership.
- Leasehold house UK: Buying, risks and freehold rights
- Lease enlargement: Converting a long lease to a freehold
Commonhold and the future of flat ownership
Learn how commonhold differs from leasehold, how owners collectively manage a building and why it may become increasingly important for flat ownership in England and Wales.
