Can I sell a flat with a short lease?

The three options, honestly compared

<b>Extend first.</b> You pay the premium and the costs, and you market a flat with a long lease that any lender will consider. It takes months, and it is money spent before you know what the flat will fetch — but it is the option that restores the widest market.

<b>Start a claim and assign it.</b> Serve the statutory notice, then assign the benefit of the claim to your buyer with the sale. The buyer gets a flat they can extend immediately rather than one they have to wait to extend, which is worth something; you avoid funding the premium yourself. It needs to be set up properly and early, and the buyer’s solicitor will want to see that it was.

<b>Sell as it is.</b> Perfectly legitimate, and sometimes right — if the lease is long enough that only the most conservative lenders are excluded, or if you need to sell quickly. The thing not to do is sell as it is while hoping nobody notices; every buyer’s conveyancer will report the term, and the discussion is better had with a valuation you commissioned than with one the buyer did.

What to establish before you market

The exact unexpired term, from the lease rather than from memory, and where that sits against current lender minimums. The difference between 81 and 79 years is worth knowing precisely before an agent sets a price.

What a statutory extension would cost on this flat. That is a valuer’s figure, and it is the number both you and your buyer are going to be negotiating around whether or not you obtain it.

Whether your own right to claim is available — which, since the two-year ownership requirement was abolished, turns on being the registered proprietor rather than on how long you have owned it.