How to Sell a Property with a Short Lease
Selling a house or a flat ought to be easy. But if you have a house or a flat with a short lease then selling it could be very difficult… or even totally impossible. If you have short lease problems here's what you need to know about short leases, and a way to sell your property quickly no matter how short the lease.
Article updated: September 2026
Do You Have a Short Lease?
If you own your property on a leasehold basis then, at some point now or in the future, you could have a short lease problem. Owning property on a leasehold basis means that you only have the right to occupy the property for a fixed number of years.
If you pay annual ground rent and/or pay service charges you are probably a leaseholder.
The short lease problem only applies to leasehold property, which includes most flats or apartments and some houses. If you own your property on a freehold basis this problem doesn't apply to you. Also in Scotland and Northern Ireland, due to legal differences, the short lease problem generally doesn't occur.
What is a Short Lease?
A short lease is not actually that short! In fact, a short lease can actually be quite long. Short leases are, usually, leases with 70 years or fewer remaining. But sometimes leases with 80 years or fewer remaining are considered short leases.
Why a Short Lease is Such a Problem
The big problem with a short lease is that banks and building societies won't usually lend money on flats, apartments or houses with a short lease. Lenders will normally need the lease to run for at least 25-30 years beyond the end of the mortgage, and most will not lend at all on a lease under 70 years, as the HomeOwners Alliance sets out. Specialist lenders who will lend on short lease property generally charge much more for their mortgages.
This means that, if you want to sell, whether a buyer can get a mortgage depends on the lender and on the years left. NatWest's lending criteria, for example, ask for at least 30 years remaining at the end of the mortgage term, and warn that a property's value keeps falling once the lease drops below 85 years until it is extended.
Why a Short Lease Property is Often Unmortgageable
The shorter the lease on a house or flat the less it becomes worth, while the cost of solving the problem rises. Banks and building societies don't want to lend on a short lease property that is quickly becoming worth less than the buyer originally paid for it, meaning the property can become, potentially, unmortgageable.
How to Check if You Have a Short Lease
You'll need to check your lease to find out if you have a short lease. If you don't have a copy your freeholder, your current mortgage lender or the solicitor or conveyancer who handled the original purchase may be able to help with this.
You can check whether a property is a freehold or a leasehold, for free, using the government's property information service.
You can get more information and find out who the freeholder is by buying a copy of the official title register for the property from HM Land Registry's search service.
Once you know when your lease started and how long it is for it is easy to calculate if you have a short lease problem.
Solutions to the Problem
Here are three possible solutions to the short lease problem:
- Extend your short lease.
Your property will still be leasehold. But buyers will be able to get a mortgage on the newly extended long lease. You'll then be able to sell it. - Buying your freehold.
A house then becomes freehold and can be sold as one. A flat does not: you keep your own lease and hold the building's freehold jointly with the other owners, which the government's commonhold explainer describes as a share of freehold. Buying that share does not by itself extend your lease, and it is the lease's remaining term that a lender still has to accept. - Sell your house or flat to a cash buyer.
If you can find a cash buyer for your house or flat they won't need a mortgage. So it won't matter that you have a short lease.
Extensions
If you own a leasehold flat or house you have a legal right to extend the lease. The statutory extension adds 50 years for a house and 90 years for a flat. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 will change that to 990 years and remove marriage value, but those parts of the Act are not yet in force, so a claim made today runs on the current rules, as the government's leasehold reform explainer confirms.
You no longer need to have owned the property for two years before you can extend. That rule went on 31 January 2025, as HM Land Registry's practice guide 27 sets out, so a claim can be made as soon as you own the lease. That includes a house or flat you have just bought or inherited. You still have to qualify in other ways: the right belongs to the tenant under a long lease, meaning one originally granted for more than 21 years, and there are some exceptions.
You can extend a lease either by informal negotiation with the freeholder or by using a formal legal process and serving the freeholder with a Tenant's Notice to extend.
You will need a solicitor who specialises in leasehold extension and a surveyor or valuer to advise you on the likely cost of extending the lease. You can also get advice from The Leasehold Advisory Service or LEASE. They are a Government-funded body who provides free initial advice to residential leaseholders.
What does Extending a Lease Cost?
For a flat, you pay a premium to extend. It takes into account the reduction in the value of the freeholder's interest in the property between the existing lease and the new longer lease plus compensation for loss of ground rent. A house is different: the statutory 50-year extension of a house carries no premium, but the rent under the extended lease becomes a modern ground rent, set at the letting value of the site, under section 15 of the 1967 Act (the Leasehold Reform Act 1967).
For a flat you may also have to pay a share of what is known as marriage value if the lease has 80 years or fewer left. Marriage value is the increase in the combined value of the freeholder's and the leaseholder's interests that the extension creates, and half of it is payable to the freeholder, under Schedule 13 to the 1993 Act (the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993). That is still the position today. The 2024 Act's removal of marriage value is not yet in force.
The Leasehold Advisory Service explains how marriage value is calculated.
And the Leasehold Advisory Service calculator can estimate the likely cost of extending the lease on a flat.
What Drives the Cost
How much depends on the flat's value, the ground rent and above all the years left. The Leasehold Advisory Service calculator gives an estimate for a specific flat. The cost climbs sharply once a lease has 80 years or fewer left, because marriage value comes in at that point, so the same flat costs far more to extend at 65 years than at 85.
On top of this, you will have your own solicitor's and valuer's fees to pay. Under the formal route you also pay the freeholder's reasonable costs of checking your claim, valuing the flat and granting the new lease, under section 60 of the 1993 Act, but not the freeholder's costs of any tribunal hearing.
How Long does Extending a Lease Take?
If you want to extend your lease you'll need to allow time to hire a solicitor and valuer, time to serve any necessary notices and wait for a response, time to negotiate with the freeholder and then time for the legal work to be done.
If everything can't be agreed you may need to take your case to a legal tribunal, which will take more time.
Extending a short lease is likely to take at least three and possibly 12 months so be sure to allow for this before deciding to go ahead.
Buying your Freehold
The law gives a qualifying owner of a leasehold house the right to buy its freehold, and qualifying owners of flats in a building the right to buy the building's freehold together, as the government's leasehold guidance explains. This is known as enfranchisement. For flats the statutory route is collective enfranchisement, which needs enough of the building's leaseholders to take part.
This works in a similar way to extending a short lease. You can either negotiate informally with the freeholder or formally by serving a legal notice on them. Again, it is recommended that you get help from a solicitor and surveyor or valuer.
The price of the freehold is worked out differently from a lease extension. It values the freeholder's interest in the whole building, including any flats whose owners do not take part, so the lease extension calculator does not cover it. A valuer who does enfranchisement work is where a figure comes from.
If you own a flat on a short lease you can get together with other flat owners in the block and buy the freehold together. You will need to approach the other owners. Those who want to buy will need to have the money to buy it and agree to the deal.
The Advantages of Selling to a Cash Buyer
Selling your short lease property to a cash buyer is one of the options you might consider before deciding which is best for you.
If you sell your short lease property to a cash buyer they won't need a mortgage, so the fact the property is unmortgageable won't halt the sale.
You'll save time, save the costs of buying or extending the lease, and you won't have to deal with solicitors, surveyors or negotiate with the freeholder.
Your property will be sold and the cash will be in the bank in just a few weeks.
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