Lease under 80 years — marriage value and what it adds to the premium

My lease is near 80 years — why is that the number everyone mentions?

Because of what happens to the price of extending. Under the law in force, where a qualifying flat lease has 80 years or fewer remaining when the statutory claim is made, marriage value may form part of the premium payable to the landlord — and it is treated as nil above that. Crossing 80 years therefore adds a component to the cost that was not there before. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 provides for marriage value to be abolished, but that change is not in force.

From the e-ROT archive

This scenario is drawn from Report on Title material dealing with this specific circumstance.

Lexsure master Report on Title paragraph: Length of Lease and Proposed Leasehold Reform · See the wording

What marriage value is

Extending a lease makes the flat worth more. Marriage value is the name given to that increase in value, and under the current statutory valuation rules a share of it — conventionally half — can be payable to the landlord as part of the premium, where the lease has 80 years or fewer remaining when the claim is commenced.

Above 80 years the figure is treated as nil. So the cost of extending does not rise smoothly as the lease shortens; it rises, and then at 80 years a further component appears. That step is why advisers talk about the 80-year threshold rather than about lease length in general.

The relevant date is the valuation date, normally the date a valid claim notice is given — not the date you start thinking about it, and not the date the extension completes. A lease at 81 years when you take advice may be at 80 by the time notice is served, and that is a question of months, not years.

If the lease is just above 80 years

This is the situation where timing is worth money. Marriage value is currently nil where more than 80 years remain at the date the claim is commenced, so serving in time is a real and quantifiable saving rather than a theoretical one.

The master wording is direct about it: obtain specialist advice promptly rather than simply waiting for the proposed reforms to take effect. The reason is the arithmetic above — a reform that arrives after you have crossed the threshold has not helped you with this extension.

"Promptly" here means weeks. A statutory claim needs a valuation, a notice and in most cases a solicitor, and the clock is running against the lease.

If the lease is already at or below 80

Then marriage value may already form part of the premium, and the question changes from how to avoid it to what it amounts to. That is a valuation question about this flat, and it is the point at which specialist lease-extension valuation advice stops being prudent and starts being necessary.

The master wording’s warning to buyers is worth repeating in full, because it is the mistake that costs the most: you should not base the price you are prepared to pay for the property on the assumption that marriage value will have been abolished by the time you extend. The 2024 Act provides for abolition; abolition has not happened.

There is a second reason not to wait. The premium rises as the term shortens whatever happens to the law, so delay has a cost even on the most optimistic view of the reform timetable.

Length of Lease and Proposed Leasehold Reform

Master precedent Lexsure e-ROTScope Remaining term, marriage value, reformWord count 100Status Current master paragraph

The Lease has approximately **[XX years] remaining**. The remaining term of a lease can affect the value, saleability and mortgageability of a leasehold property and the cost of obtaining a lease extension. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 contains significant proposed changes to the statutory lease-extension regime, including 990-year lease extensions and a new valuation system under which marriage value would be abolished. However, those changes are **not yet in force**. The Government is currently consulting on important parts of the new valuation arrangements and further legislation and regulations are required before the new regime can be implemented. …

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