The Leasehold Questions Every Agent Should Be Able to Answer

Leasehold is where English and Welsh sales collapse, usually months in, usually over something that was knowable on day one. An agent who can ask four questions at instruction saves everybody a wasted quarter.

The four numbers that matter

The unexpired lease term is the first number. Lenders become cautious as terms shorten, and there is a widely used threshold around eighty years below which extension costs rise sharply because marriage value enters the calculation.

Ground rent is the second. Escalating ground rents, particularly ones that double at intervals, have made properties effectively unmortgageable, and the problem sits in leases granted well within recent memory.

The service charge is the third, and the question is not only how much but how volatile. A charge that has doubled in three years tells a buyer more than the current figure does.

The fourth is who the freeholder and managing agent are, and how responsive they have been. A slow freeholder can add months to a sale through the management pack alone.

Why sales collapse here

Ask for the last three years of service charge accounts and any planned major works. A pending Section 20 consultation for roof works is a material fact and one that will surface at conveyancing regardless.

Reforms in this area have been moving for several years and continue to change the position on extensions, ground rents and commonhold. Check the current position rather than repeating what was true when you trained.

Get the lease itself at instruction, not at offer. Reading the term, the rent and the charge takes ten minutes and prevents the collapse that costs everyone three months.

Tell the buyer these figures before they view, not after they offer. A buyer who discovers a high service charge at survey blames the agent even when nobody concealed anything.

What to do at instruction

Put the four numbers in the particulars. This is material information territory and leaving them out is an omission rather than a discretion.

A short lease is not unsellable, it is differently priced, and saying so early lets the vendor make a real decision about extending before marketing.

None of this is legal advice and it should not sound like it. Your role is to surface the facts early and route the buyer to a conveyancer who reads the lease properly.