Extending your lease
You can purchase a lease extension.
Why you might want to extend your lease
In almost all cases, your lease runs for a period or term of 125 years from the date the first flat in your building was sold. The amount of time left is sometimes known as the ‘unexpired term’. The value of your property decreases as the term of the lease gets shorter. At the end of the lease term, you have to return your flat to the council as the landlord.
If your lease has less than 99 years left then you might think about extending the lease. This is very important if your lease has just over 80 years left, because extending your lease becomes much more expensive with fewer than 80 years remaining.
As the number of years on the lease runs down, this may also affect your ability to get a mortgage against the property. UK Finance (used to be the Council of Mortgage Lenders) says that it may be difficult to get a mortgage where the lease has less than 60 years left to run.
We can give you general advice about extending your lease, but we cannot tell you what you might have to pay for it. You can get an estimate by using calculators on the LEASE website or at Money Saving Expert.
Who can apply to extend their lease
You can buy a new lease for a term of 90 years on top of the number of years left on your existing lease. Your extended lease will have very similar conditions to your old one.
You will have to pay to extend your lease, so you will need to think very carefully if it is going to be worth doing this.
You have to propose the price you think you should pay. You will also have to pay our costs as well as your own legal and valuation costs.
How to extend your lease
If you decide to apply to extend your lease, you will need to serve us with a formal notice (PDF). Send your formal notice to:
Law and Governance
Resources Directorate
3rd Floor
222 Upper Street
London
N1 1XR
Your formal notice has to include certain information, including what you think you should pay to extend your lease. We strongly recommend you get professional advice first. Serving the notice commits you to paying our costs, so it is important to get advice and think about your options first.
The notice gives us at least two months to respond. At any time following the service of the notice we can ask you to pay a deposit of 10 per cent of your offer price or £250, whichever is more.
We can visit your property, after giving you advance notice, to carry out a valuation to use in negotiations.
We have to respond to your formal notice by serving what is called a 'counter notice'. In this notice we will either accept your proposed price or say what we think you should pay. We begin negotiations and if, after certain time limits, there is no agreement, either side can apply to the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber), who will make a decision which will be binding on both parties.
Get information and advice from the LEASE, the independent leasehold advisory service.
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act
The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 came into force on 24 July 2024 but not everything in the Act was put into action right away. Some parts, like valuation rates to decide the price for buying a freehold or extending a lease, need more consultations and secondary legislation. This is likely to happen in stages and we understand might not be finished until 2025 or 2026. We will update this page once the secondary legislation is published and we've reviewed the changes.
