Lease extensions

About lease extensions

This guide assists you, as a leaseholder or shared owner of a flat, in understanding which procedure to use to extend your lease.

When you extend your lease, your current lease is surrendered, and we then grant you a new lease for the extended term.

To extend your lease, you must pay us a premium, which is calculated according to the rules set out in the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 (the 1993 Act) .

If you own 100% of your lease and have done so for two years or more, with a term of 21 years or greater, you have a statutory right to extend your lease.

Your lease will be extended by 90 years.

As an outright leaseholder, you have two options to extend your lease.

You may choose whichever option to extend your lease, but following the formal route will be more expensive.

Serve a formal notice under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 (the 1993 Act) on ISHA.

The notice must include the amount you are offering for the extension. When you serve a notice, you start a timetable, giving us two months to respond to you by serving a counter notice, further to engaging a RICS qualified valuer to assess your proposals.

Should we disagree on the amount offered, the statutory rules allow either party to apply to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT) for an independent determination.

In addition to the premium, you will have to pay:

your legal and valuation costs
our reasonable legal and valuation costs
an administration fee to ISHA.

If you wish to follow this route, we recommend you seek independent legal advice to confirm whether you have the right to follow this procedure and obtain advice about the consequences of doing so.

You proceed informally, by a legal agreement between you and us (but still following principles of the 1993 Act).

This informal procedure does not involve serving notices; matters are simply negotiated and agreed upon by each party.

With this process, you instruct ISHA to conduct a Lease Extension Valuation by a RICS qualified valuer.

On receipt of the valuation, an offer is made to you, calculated in accordance with the 1993 Act.

If the offer is accepted, you will provide us with your legal advisor’s details, and we will instruct our solicitors to handle the transaction.

If you disagree with the valuation or the offer, you will be required to follow the formal statutory process.

In addition to the premium, you will have to pay:

your legal costs (which may be less than under option 1)
our reasonable legal and valuation costs
an administration fee to ISHA.