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Lease Extension Solicitors

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A lease extension can help you sell or mortgage a leasehold property that’s near the end of its lease, or get rid of ground rent payments. Our lease extension solicitors can guide you through every step so you can get the most out of your property.

We can advise on whether to extend your lease voluntarily or statutorily, how to navigate ground rent, and what you can expect in terms of legal costs. If needed, we can also make court or tribunal applications if your landlord doesn’t respond to your offer or doesn’t offer you a reasonable price or reasonable terms for your new lease.

Why Irwin Mitchell?

We have specialist teams in both London and Chichester who advise on leasehold issues on a daily basis. As we act for both leaseholders and landlords, we truly understand how both parties work in this complex area of law. This means you get a clear overview of all your options before you have to make any decisions.

We’re committed to making the process of extending your lease as smooth and simple as possible, so we won’t complicate things with lots of legal jargon.

Call us today for a no obligation consultation on 0370 1500 100, or fill out our online enquiry form.

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Jeremy Raj Partner Meet the team

Lease Extensions - More Information

A property can be hard to sell or re-mortgage if it has a short amount of time left on its lease. A lease extension can help you sell the property and improve the value of your investment.

A lease extension can also be financially worthwhile if you plan to hold on to the property. It may work out cheaper to pay a premium to change the terms of your lease and replace ground rent payments with a smaller ‘peppercorn’ (nil) rent.

A voluntary lease extension simply involves you and your landlord agreeing to a new lease between yourselves. This is often quicker than a statutory lease extension, but you could run into difficulties if your landlord charges you hidden costs, or slows down the process in any way.

If you’ve owned a leasehold flat for at least two years, you have a statutory right to extend the lease. You can use this right to make a statutory lease extension if a voluntary lease extension isn’t possible, or if the landlord isn’t offering you fair terms.

When you start a statutory lease extension, you’ll need to decide how much money to offer your landlord as a premium for extending the lease. We’ll send them your offer in a formal notice.

Your landlord will have two months to either accept your offer or suggest a counter-offer. You and your landlord will then have up to six months to agree on the premium and the terms of the new lease.

Our specialist solicitors can advise what type of lease extension is best for you, and guide you through the processes from start to finish.

Yes. If you own a leasehold house you can only extend the lease up to 50 years. You’ll also need to pay a rent to your freeholder for the rest of the lease. Most people who own houses choose to buy the freehold instead – see our Leasehold Enfranchisement page for more information.

You can extend the lease on a flat by an extra 90 years once you’ve owned the property for two years. Usually, you’ll need to pay a lump sum (a premium) to your landlord and you will need to cover their reasonable legal and valuation fees. After that, your annual rent payments to the freeholder will drop to a sum known as a ‘peppercorn’ (nil).

Mr & Mrs Parkes

"The whole team was pleasant and professional at all times. We would recommend them without reservation."

Mr & Mrs Parkes, clients

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Does A Lease Extension Take?

Voluntary lease extensions often take 6-12 weeks. Statutory lease extensions usually take between six months to a year to complete.

Both types of lease extension can take longer if there are difficulties with contacting your landlord. See our Absentee Landlord page for more information about how we can reduce these delays.

What Kind Of Issues Could I Face During A Lease Extension?

If you follow the voluntary process, your landlord could refuse to grant the lease extension, or they could try to change the terms of the lease. This could mean you have to pay a large ground rent or get a worse overall deal. If this happens to you, and you have the right to extend your lease, you can instead follow the statutory option. The landlord might still unreasonably refuse to grant you a lease extension or try to change the terms of your lease. If so, you have the option to resolve the situation in a court or Tribunal.

Even though you only need to pay reasonable legal and valuation costs for your landlord, these could still be higher than you expect. You can challenge your landlord’s legal costs at a Tribunal, but you need to consider whether it’s worth paying the Tribunal fees.

An absentee landlord can also cause problems – not only will you struggle to extend your lease without them, but anything else they are responsible for (signing off repair works, for example) will have to be put on hold. Read more about how we can help with our Absentee Landlord & Freeholder Tracing Service.

Related Information - Lease Extensions

Absentee Landlord – Our tracing service can help you track down your landlord if you're not sure where they are
Selling a property – Our team of property experts are on hand to make selling your property quick and easy
Conveyancing guide – Everything you need to know about selling a property
Freehold purchase – A purchase freehold is another way to maintain or increase the value of a leasehold property

All Scottish cases will be handled by the Scottish law firm with which we are associated, Irwin Mitchell Scotland LLP. The law relating to conveyancing and property is different in Scotland and you will receive separate advice about what that means. Please visit our Scottish Conveyancing page for more information.

About Irwin Mitchell

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