Extending a Lease

Solicitors specialising in Extending Leases

Extending a lease can preserve, or significantly increase the value of your flat. However, residential leasehold extension is a highly specialist area of law – and that’s why it’s so very important to have solicitors who know what they’re doing.

You can rest assured that our specialist team have that experience and can help you to extend the lease on your flat.

This Extending a Lease website looks at topics such as what you get if you decide to extend your lease, the alternatives you might like to consider if you decide it’s not for you, how much your lease extension will cost and why you will also need a specialist surveyor when extending the lease on a flat.

Thinking of extending your lease ? Looking for Specialist Solicitors? Call us on FREEPHONE 0800 1404544 for FREE Initial Phone Advice.

Extending a lease – what’s in it for me?

The Leasehold Reform, Housing & Urban Development Act 1993 provided the owners of many UK residential leasehold flats with the legal right to extend their lease by an additional 90 years.

Your lease is slowly losing value. The shorter the remaining term becomes, the less it’s worth – as a result extending your lease becomes more expensive. And that is made worse currently, because in a rising property market, your flat is gaining in value and that will also add to the price you are going to need to pay to extend your lease

Shorter leases can be much harder to sell – with some purchasers reluctant to buy a lease with under 80-85 years left and with mortgages harder to obtain on short leases – especially leases with under 70 years left.

Extending a lease is something you should certainly consider if your lease has between 70 and 90 years left. In particular once the remaining lease term dips just one day under 80 years, the price of extending that lease can increase significantly.

Our advice is to think twice before putting off extending the lease on your flat. Avoiding that expense now merely increases the price you will need to pay for extending your lease in the future, and so acting now will save you a significant amount of money in the long run.

Why use us to extend your lease?

Our team are genuine experts and understand all about extending leases – with considerable experience in this specialist area in acting for numerous residential leaseholders and freeholders in thousands of leasehold extension cases over the last 25 years. They are possibly the largest, most specialist team of its type in the country.
We are the only solicitors recommended for lease extension advice by The HomeOwners Alliance -the U.K.’s leading organisation to champion, support and serve Britain’s 17 million homeowners.

We provide FREE initial phone advice on extending a lease

Our team can exist you with your lease extension – whether it’s an informal, voluntary agreement with your freeholder or if you go down the formal or statutory route in extending your lease by 90 years [click here to read about the risks involved in an informal lease extension]

Our specialist team handle your case from beginning to end – working closely with specialist surveyors from the initial valuation of the premium you need to pay and application. We also work with you all the way, if necessary, to the First-Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) [ known as the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal until it was renamed in July 2013] – though, fortunately, Tribunal disputes are fairly rare.

We work on a daily basis with surveyors who specialise in lease extension valuations. We strongly recommend that you get a proper valuation of the premium you need to pay for your lease extension from a specialist surveyor – and, as part of our service, we are happy to organise, on your behalf, a local specialist surveyor for the valuation

We can help you in extending your lease either by taking your instructions by e-mail, phone or Zoom video without having to see you face to face – or, alternatively, we can meet you in our offices in Wiltshire and Hampshire.

Our clients like us – in a recent client survey, 95% said that our service was “excellent” or “good”, with 98% saying they would be happy “recommending the firm to others”. That high degree of client satisfaction has helped us grow 1000% in just 12 years – just by getting our service right.

How our Solicitors can help in Extending your Lease

In advising you on extending the lease on your flat, our specialist team can also explain your options with regard to related issues such as:

The right for leaseholders to join together to buy the freehold of their block of flats – a legal process known as collective or leasehold enfranchisement