Leasehold Extensions and Enfranchisement

If you own a leasehold flat or house, you may be able to extend your lease, or buy the freehold outright. It’s a fast-moving area of law, and we’ve handled the different routes through it.

The legislation here is very particular, and you’ll need careful guidance through serving the relevant notices, drafting the documents and the rest of the work. Where the correct procedures are followed, a landlord can be required to extend a lease by a set number of years, depending on the circumstances and whether the statutory or informal route is taken.

Sometimes the law lets individual flat or house owners extend leases or buy freeholds. At other times a group of leaseholders in a larger building can club together to buy the freehold between them. There’s also legislation that requires a freeholder, in some circumstances, to offer the freehold to the leaseholders before it can be sold to anyone else, and separate rules that allow management of the freehold to be taken from the freehold owner. We can advise on all of it.

What will it cost?

Pricing varies with the work involved, and costs are often shared where several leaseholders are acting together. As a rule, we charge on an hourly rate based on the number of hours involved, and the complexity of the extension or enfranchisement will determine how long the matter takes. If you’d like an estimate, get in touch and we’ll discuss your case and guide you on it.

What work is included?

Every matter is different, and the exact work depends on the nature of your extension or enfranchisement. In general, though, our costs will cover:

• Obtaining and reviewing title deeds
• Engaging with the landlord or freeholder on your behalf
• Drafting any necessary paperwork and arranging for it to be signed
• Registering the lease at HM Land Registry

Is there anything not included?

Our costs cover the work usually needed to complete the extension or enfranchisement. If you need extra legal services (for example, a Declaration of Trust setting out shares of ownership), we’ll charge for those separately. You can read about the other residential property services we offer on our Residential Conveyancing page.

How long will it take?

Plenty of things affect the speed, especially the number of leaseholders involved and how quickly the landlord or their solicitors respond. In a straightforward case, where terms are agreed quickly and no objections are raised, we’d expect the matter to take 2 to 4 months. More complex cases where the parties are in dispute can take upwards of 6 to 12 months.

The rules here are strict on timing and notices, so early advice can be the difference between a smooth extension and a stalled one.