Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Seven provisions that make a flat difficult to mortgage, and what can be done about each. From specialist leasehold solicitors in London.
Reviewed 25 July 2026
Lenders publish their requirements. A lease either satisfies them or it does not — and where it does not, the problem can usually be identified precisely and fixed.
A short unexpired term. Requirements vary between lenders, but caution sets in well before ninety years and refusals become common below eighty.
Ground rent that escalates. Doubling rents, and rents rising by a formula a lender regards as onerous. This is now the single most frequent cause of a declined leasehold application.
No mutual enforcement covenant — nothing obliging the landlord to enforce the other leases at a leaseholder's request, so somebody suffering from a neighbour's breach has no route to a remedy.
Defective insurance or repairing provisions: no obligation on anyone to insure to full reinstatement value, or parts of the building nobody is obliged to repair.
Absolute prohibitions on assignment or subletting with no consent mechanism at all.
Forfeiture provisions without protection for the lender — permitting forfeiture on insolvency, or without notice to the mortgagee.
And in taller buildings, an unresolved building safety position or missing certificates.
Not simply that a lease is or is not acceptable. Which specific provision fails, which lenders are likely to take the point, whether it can be cured by a deed of variation or requires a new lease, roughly what that would cost, and whether it is worth doing now or at the next opportunity.
For a seller that converts an unquantified worry into a decision. For a buyer it converts a refusal into a negotiating position.
Before marketing, if you are selling — because a defect found by the buyer's lender in week six is a renegotiation, and the same defect found in advance is a plan. Before exchange, if you are buying. And before granting new leases, if your building owns its own freehold, because that is the one moment you control the drafting.
We review leases against lender requirements for a fixed fee, and can carry out the variation or the new lease if one is needed.
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This article reflects our understanding of the position on 25 July 2026 and is general information rather than legal advice. The law in this area is changing: take advice on your own circumstances before relying on it.
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