Lease Extensions Explained

The cost depends on three main factors: how many years remain on your lease, your flat's current market value and how much ground rent you pay.

You usually pay three main costs:

• Your professional fees (valuation, negotiation and legal work)
• The freeholder's fees (which have to be reasonable)
• The premium, which is the payment to actually extend your lease

Most lease extensions cost between a few thousand and several tens of thousands of pounds. With Zero Down Lease, our Guaranteed Price gives you one fixed amount covering everything. No surprises, no hidden charges.

We make lease extensions simple, clear and affordable. Most people need three separate companies to extend their lease. Not with us.

Our Guaranteed Price is one capped amount that includes valuation, legal work and the premium payment to your freeholder. If the final cost ends up higher than expected, we cover the difference. If it ends up lower, we share the savings with you.

You get complete peace of mind from day one. One price, one point of contact, one straightforward process. You can even pay for it once it is all done with our lease extension finance.

Most leaseholders have a legal right to extend their lease under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993.

You are usually eligible if:

• The original lease was for more than 21 years,
• The property is a flat or maisonette, and
• You are not in breach of your lease (for example, you do not owe money or have not made unapproved changes).

The two-year ownership requirement has been removed under recent reforms, so you can now extend as soon as you complete your purchase.

If you're unsure whether you qualify, we can check your lease and confirm your eligibility for free.

The premium is what you pay your freeholder to extend your lease. It's calculated using a formula set out in legislation and based on:

• How many years remain on your lease
• Your flat's current market value
• Your ground rent and how it changes
• Whether your lease is above or below 80 years (if below, Marriage Value applies)

A professional RICS-certified valuer determines the premium using the legal formula. This valuation forms the foundation for negotiations with your freeholder. Our valuers have saved clients over £1.5 million on premiums by ensuring robust, well-evidenced valuations.

Yes, having a mortgage doesn't prevent you from extending your lease.

For a statutory (formal) lease extension, you don't need your lender's permission to proceed. The process is protected by law.

For an informal extension, you will need a document from your lender called a Deed of Substituted Security. This confirms the mortgage will transfer to your new lease. This can add time and cost to the process.

This is one of the most common barriers leaseholders face. You know you need to extend, but finding tens of thousands of pounds isn't straightforward.

Zero Down Lease offers a solution: extend now and pay later. Our financing option allows you to complete your lease extension and pay us back when you sell or remortgage your property.

This breaks the "chicken and egg" problem where you can't sell because of a short lease but can't afford to extend because you haven't sold. Subject to eligibility, you can extend without the large upfront cost.

Your deposit to start the process with us covers:

• All of your professional fees (legal / negotiation etc) needed to start the lease extension
• Payment towards any payments requested by the landlord before the lease extension completes

This allows the process to start without you paying the full amount upfront. You know exactly what you're paying from day one, with no unexpected costs appearing later in the process.

Most lease extensions take between six and nine months. The timeline depends on how quickly your freeholder responds and how negotiations progress.

For statutory lease extensions, there's a legal framework with set deadlines:

• Your freeholder has two months to respond to your Section 42 notice
• You then have up to six months to negotiate before either party can apply to the First-tier Tribunal
• The entire process has a maximum of 12 months from serving notice (unless we need to go to Court / Tribunal).

Your dedicated case manager keeps you informed at every stage. No chasing, no wondering what's happening.

Unresponsive freeholders are frustrating but not uncommon. If your freeholder doesn't reply, as part of our process we will do lots of research.

They might be:

• An absent landlord with no forwarding address
• A dissolved company
• An estate in probate
• Simply ignoring correspondence

Once we understand the issue, we take the appropriate legal steps. This might include tracing the freeholder, applying to the court for a vesting order or using the statutory process to force a response.

We've handled these situations many times. No matter what happens a lease extension is a statutory right – a difficult freeholder won't stop your lease extension.

Yes, you can negotiate directly with your freeholder outside the statutory process. However, we rarely recommend it.

An informal lease extension might look good on paper, but when you dig into it, you often discover the same hidden traps. Most freeholders are investors whose sole goal is to maximise their return at your expense.

Informal deals frequently include:

• Offering significantly less than the additional 90 years you'd normally get
• Changes to the lease which become permanent which can cost you thousands
• Keep the existing ground rent in place to maximise their income

A statutory lease extension is the "gold standard." It guarantees 90 years, reduces ground rent to zero and only limited changes to the lease can be made. The question to ask yourself is: "Why would a freeholder offer me a better deal than they're legally required to?"

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) only applies if your premium exceeds certain thresholds.

You will pay Stamp Duty if:

• The premium exceeds £125,000 for a single property
• The premium exceeds £40,000 if you already own other properties (additional property surcharge applies)

Most lease extensions fall below these thresholds, so SDLT often doesn't apply. We'll confirm whether it affects your situation as part of your Valuation. It is worth noting a Stamp Duty Return is always required if the premium is above £40,000.

Often yes, though it depends on your circumstances.

If your lease still has plenty of years remaining and your ground rent isn't excessive, and your buyer / their lenders would proceed with its current lease then you are in a good position as we can transfer our Guaranteed Price over to your buyer as part of your sale.

If not, trying to both sell a property and extend the lease at the same time is more complex. It's like trying to land two planes on a runway at the same time. The buyer's lender will have their own requirements, and timing becomes critical.

If you are looking to remortgage you might find yourself in a "chicken-and-egg" situation where your lender will not release the funds until the lease extension is complete, but without the remortgage you can't pay for the lease extension.

We can advise on the best approach for your situation. In nearly all cases, completing the extension first makes the sale smoother and more valuable. This is why we offer lease extension financing to help you extend now, pay later.

Disagreements over the premium are common. Freeholders typically want to charge more than the lease is worth extending. That's where our expert negotiators come in.

Our RICS valuers and SRA-regulated solicitors handle the negotiations on your behalf, backed by robust valuation evidence.

If you still cannot reach agreement, statutory lease extensions can be determined by the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber). The Tribunal examines both valuations and sets a fair premium based on the legal formula.

This does unfortunately add significant time and cost to the process, but any cost of Court and/or Tribunal are included as part of our Guaranteed Price.

Getting started takes less than a minute.

1. Request your free lease report: Register on our website and we'll pull your lease details from HM Land Registry
2. Review your personalised report: See your lease length, ground rent, landlord details and estimated extension cost
3. Book a free consultation: Speak with our ALEP-accredited team about your options (no obligation, no pressure)
4. Get your Guaranteed Price: We conduct a full RICS valuation and confirm your price and check your eligibility for finance
5. Extend with confidence: We handle everything from negotiation to HM Land Registry registration

You'll know exactly what you're paying from the start. No large upfront costs, no surprises along the way.

This is the biggest shake-up to leasehold law in decades. It got Royal Assent in May 2024 and is being rolled out in stages. For a full breakdown, see our Leasehold Reform Guide.

Here is what is changing:

• No more two-year ownership rule. You can serve a Section 42 notice the moment you complete your purchase. No more waiting.
• 990-year extensions. Instead of adding 90 years on top of what you have left, extensions will be for 990 years at zero ground rent.
• Marriage value scrapped. The extra charge that hits when your lease drops below 80 years is being abolished. For shorter leases, this could save tens of thousands.
• Ground rent caps. The way ground rent feeds into the premium calculation is being reformed, which should bring costs down for anyone stuck with high or escalating ground rents.

Not everything is live yet. The government is still consulting on some of the detail. We track every update and will make sure your extension uses whichever rules work best for you.

Yes. The statutory process involves serving formal legal notices, negotiating terms, and completing a new lease. You need a solicitor who knows leasehold enfranchisement law to do this properly.

You also need a specialist surveyor (a valuer) to calculate the premium and negotiate with the freeholder's side. Doing it yourself risks overpaying, or worse, making a mistake that invalidates your claim entirely.

With Zero Down Lease, both your solicitor and valuer are included in your Guaranteed Price. We appoint ALEP-accredited professionals who do this day in, day out, so you don't need to shop around or manage them yourself.

It is the formal legal notice that kicks off the statutory lease extension process. Named after Section 42 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993.

Your solicitor serves it on the freeholder. It sets out:

• Who you are and your right to extend
• Which property the claim is for
• The premium you are proposing
• The terms of the new lease

The freeholder then has two months to come back with a counter-notice, and that is where negotiation starts.

The important bit: serving the notice freezes the valuation date. So if property prices go up or your lease gets shorter after that point, it does not affect what you pay. The sooner you serve, the sooner the clock stops.

With Zero Down Lease, your solicitor handles all of this. Get your free lease report to see what your extension could cost.

Almost always. The value your property gains from a longer lease usually outweighs what you pay for the extension. This is particularly true once your lease drops below 90 years.

Take a flat worth £350,000 with 75 years left. The extension might cost around £25,000, but the longer lease could add £40,000+ to the property's value. That is money in your pocket before you have even sold.

Use our free lease calculator to estimate the cost and value uplift for your property.

On top of the numbers, a longer lease makes your property:

• Easier to sell. Buyers and their solicitors do not want the hassle of a short lease.
• Easier to mortgage. Lenders get nervous below 80-85 years and most will refuse below 60.
• Cheaper to run. Ground rent drops to zero once you extend.

And the longer you leave it, the worse it gets. The premium goes up every year, and once you cross below 80 years, marriage value kicks in and the cost jumps overnight.

Marriage value is the uplift in your property's value that comes from extending the lease. If your lease has less than 80 years left, the law says you have to hand over 50% of that uplift to the freeholder on top of the normal premium.

Quick example:

• Your flat with a short lease is worth £250,000
• With a long lease it would be worth £300,000
• The marriage value is £50,000
• You owe the freeholder half: £25,000, on top of what you are already paying

This is why 80 years is called the cliff edge. At 81 years, no marriage value. At 79 years and 364 days, you are paying it. The difference can be tens of thousands of pounds, literally from one day to the next.

Use our free lease calculator to see how marriage value affects your specific property.

One thing to watch: the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 will abolish marriage value once its provisions come into force. Until that happens, extending before you hit 80 years is still the smartest move.

It feeds directly into the premium. Part of what you pay compensates the freeholder for the ground rent income they will lose when your lease is extended to zero. So the higher your ground rent (and the faster it increases), the more the extension costs.

Three common structures:

• Fixed ground rent (e.g. £250 per year). Straightforward to value, usually the cheapest to buy out.
• Doubling ground rent (e.g. doubles every 10 or 25 years). These escalate fast and can push the premium up considerably.
• RPI-linked ground rent (tied to inflation). Hard to predict and expensive to buy out because of the uncertainty.

Doubling and RPI-linked rents cause mortgage problems too. Most lenders will not touch a property where the ground rent is above about 0.1% of its value, or where the rent is not fixed. Extending wipes the ground rent out completely and removes the issue.

If you have an escalating ground rent, do not sit on it. The buyout cost goes up every time the rent increases. Check your estimated extension cost to see the impact.

It depends. Shared ownership works differently, and the rules are more complicated.

If you have staircased to 100% and bought out the housing association entirely, you have the same statutory right to extend as any other leaseholder under the 1993 Act.

If you have not fully staircased, the statutory right does not currently apply. Some housing associations will agree to extend voluntarily, but they are not obliged to. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 includes plans to give shared ownership leaseholders the right to extend, but those provisions are not yet in force.

If you are in shared ownership and worried about your lease getting shorter, get in touch. We can look at your lease and tell you where you stand.

No. If you go down the statutory route under the 1993 Act, the premium is set by a formula in law. The freeholder cannot demand more than that.

The formula has three parts:

• The drop in the freeholder's interest (what they lose by giving you a longer lease)
• The loss of future ground rent income
• Their share of marriage value (only applies if your lease is below 80 years)

If you cannot agree on the number, either side can take it to the First-tier Tribunal (FTT). The Tribunal decides the premium and that decision is binding.

This is exactly why the statutory route matters. With an informal deal, there is no formula and no protection. The freeholder can ask whatever they want. The statutory route gives you a legal right to a fair price.

Our RICS-qualified valuers calculate what the premium should be and negotiate hard on your behalf. Get your free lease report to see what you should expect to pay.