Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Marriage value makes extending a lease sharply more expensive below 80 years. Our London leasehold solicitors explain the arithmetic and the deadline that matters.
Reviewed 25 July 2026
Marriage value does not creep in gradually. It applies the moment a lease crosses the line, and the line is measured on the day your notice is served.
Under the law as it stands, once the unexpired term of a lease falls below eighty years the premium payable to extend includes an element called marriage value — a share of the increase in value created by combining the leaseholder's interest with the freeholder's. The freeholder is entitled to half of it.
The effect is not gradual. A lease at eighty years and one month attracts none; a lease at seventy-nine years and eleven months attracts it in full. On a flat of any real value, the difference commonly runs to several thousand pounds and sometimes considerably more.
This is the part most often missed. The unexpired term is measured at the valuation date, and on a statutory claim the valuation date is the date the section 42 notice is served — not the date you first took advice, not the date you instructed a valuer, and not the date the premium is eventually agreed.
So a leaseholder who spends four months negotiating informally with a landlord, and then serves a notice when the negotiation collapses, is valued on the term remaining at that later date. Where the lease started at eighty-one years, those four months can be the most expensive of the whole exercise.
First, if your lease is anywhere near eighty years, establish the exact expiry date before doing anything else. Leases are frequently granted for a term commencing before the date of the lease itself, so the arithmetic is not always what the front page suggests.
Second, treat the threshold as a hard deadline in any negotiation. We advise clients to diarise a date by which a section 42 notice will be served if an informal discussion has not produced a signed agreement. A landlord told that the date exists usually finds the file rather quickly.
It is intended to. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 provides for it, and if and when that provision is commenced marriage value will cease to be payable. It is not in force, no commencement date has been given, and the provision is currently subject to an appeal in which the Court of Appeal has granted freeholder interests permission to be heard.
Waiting for it is therefore a wager: that reform arrives before your lease crosses eighty years, and that it survives the litigation. For a lease at ninety-five years that may be a sensible wager. For a lease at eighty-two, it is a poor one.
We can establish your exact unexpired term, obtain a valuation and tell you what the threshold means for your figures — usually within a few days.
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.
Tell us what has happened and what you would like to achieve, and we will tell you plainly where you stand, what it is likely to cost and how long it will take.
