My lease is under 80 years. Will that stop my sale?

First, the reassurance. A short lease is a known, priced, routine feature of the flat market, not a defect that hides in the paperwork until exchange. Every conveyancer, surveyor and lender has a settled way of handling it, and there is a well-worn path from where you are to a completed sale.

What does a lease under 80 years actually change?

A lease is the fixed number of years you own the flat for, counted down from the date the lease was first granted. Marriage value is the extra value created when a short lease is extended, and under the law in force today the freeholder is entitled to 50% of it once the lease has fewer than 80 years to run.

That is why 80 years is treated as a line rather than a number. Crossing it does not stop anything, it raises the price of fixing it, which is then reflected in what a buyer will pay you.

Lenders also apply a buffer rather than a flat cut-off. Many want the lease to run for the whole mortgage term plus another 30 to 40 years, which is why a 65-year lease can pass on a short mortgage and fail on a long one.

What should I do first?

1. 1. Find the exact lease length

   Check the term and the start date on your lease or your Land Registry title, then count forward. Sellers routinely guess ten years wrong in either direction, and every decision below depends on the real figure.

2. 2. Get a proper extension valuation before you decide anything

   A surveyor experienced in leasehold valuation will give you a realistic premium range. Without that number you are choosing between routes blind, and the freeholder's own opening figure is not a valuation.

3. 3. Ask your agent which buyers your lease actually reaches

   A good local agent will tell you plainly whether the lease keeps you in the mortgage market or pushes you toward cash buyers. That single answer changes your pricing strategy more than anything else on this list.

4. 4. Choose your route

   There are three: extend before you market, sell as it stands at a price that reflects the extension cost, or start the statutory process and assign the benefit of your notice to your buyer at completion. Each is normal and each suits a different seller.

5. 5. Price the discount deliberately, not defensively

   If you sell as it stands, the discount a buyer expects should be anchored to the surveyor's premium plus their costs, not to the first reduction a nervous buyer suggests after their survey.

6. 6. Keep your own spending in step with the buyer

   Instruct your solicitor early, because leasehold sales need the management pack and it takes weeks to arrive. Hold the larger, irreversible moves until the buyer has instructed their own solicitor and applied for their mortgage, which is what real commitment looks like.

Should I extend the lease before I sell?

Sometimes, and it is a straight arithmetic question rather than a matter of principle. Extending puts your flat back in front of every mortgage buyer, which usually means more interest and a faster sale, but you pay the premium and the legal costs upfront and you wait.

• Extending first tends to pay when the lease sits just below 80 years, the flat is otherwise straightforward to sell, and you can afford to fund the premium and wait a few months.
• Selling as it stands tends to pay when you need to move on a timetable, when the lease is long enough that mainstream lenders will still look at it, or when you cannot fund the premium.
• Assigning your statutory notice suits a seller who has already started the process and does not want to lose the momentum or the valuation date.
• Doing nothing and hoping the buyer will not notice never pays. The lease length is the first thing their conveyancer reads.

Has leasehold reform changed any of this yet?

Partly, and the part that is live matters to your sale. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024, but most of it needs secondary legislation before it takes effect.

• In force: the two-year ownership requirement was removed on 31 January 2025 by SI 2025/57, so a leaseholder can serve a formal extension notice as soon as their ownership is registered.
• Not in force: the abolition of marriage value. It is written into the Act, and in 2026 it is still awaiting the secondary legislation that sets the new valuation rates, so marriage value remains payable.
• Not in force: the move from 90-year to 990-year statutory extensions, which sits in the same set of valuation reforms.
• What that means for you: extend under the rules as they are today, and treat a future reform date as a possibility rather than a plan.

The practical effect of the two-year change is the one most guidance still gets wrong. Your buyer no longer has to wait two years after completion before extending, which removes an argument buyers used to use to push your price down.

A short lease is a price question, not a permission question. Once you know the premium, you are back in control of the conversation.

What else do short-lease sellers need to know?

How do I set the right price with a short lease?

Get more than one local agent to tell you, in writing, what they would market it at and which buyers they would market it to. Agents differ far more on short-lease flats than on ordinary houses, because the answer depends on the buyers each of them actually has.

ValuQ is a platform that gives UK homeowners free, side-by-side property valuations from competing local estate agents. You stay anonymous until you choose to connect, so you can compare how several agents would handle the lease before you speak to any of them.