Somewhere in Britain right now, a flat owner is opening a service charge bill they had no meaningful input in setting, for work they cannot independently verify was done, at a price they have no real power to challenge. This is not an edge case. According to the English Housing Survey, there are approximately 4.98 million leasehold dwellings in England alone. Leasehold reform UK homeowners have been waiting for has, in theory, arrived. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act received Royal Assent in May 2024. The question worth asking clearly, without the ministerial fanfare, is whether it delivers.
What the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act actually does
The Act covers several distinct areas, and conflating them leads to confusion. Ground rents on existing leases were not abolished outright, the legislation bans new ground rents on residential leases and caps existing ones in a more limited fashion than many campaigners wanted. For new leases, ground rent is set at a peppercorn, meaning effectively zero. That is unambiguously good. For those already paying £200, £400, or in some notorious cases, doubling ground rents every decade, the relief is less dramatic than the headlines suggested.
Service charge transparency is perhaps the most practically significant change for the majority of existing leaseholders. Freeholders and managing agents are now required to provide much clearer breakdowns of what service charges cover, supply annual reports in a prescribed format, and face tighter rules around administration charges. The Act also strengthens leaseholders’ ability to challenge unreasonable charges through the First-tier Tribunal. Whether tribunals are adequately resourced to handle the volume of cases that transparency will inevitably surface is a separate, pointed question.
Enfranchisement: the right to buy your freehold just got less expensive, in theory
Collective enfranchisement, the right of leaseholders to club together and purchase the freehold of their building, was already a legal right before this Act. The problem was the cost calculation. Under the old rules, freeholders were compensated not just for the present value of the building, but for the loss of future income streams, including marriage value. Marriage value is the uplift in a property’s worth that occurs once the lease is extended or the freehold is purchased, and it was shared 50/50 between leaseholder and freeholder when the lease had fewer than 80 years remaining. The Act abolishes marriage value payments entirely. For leaseholders with shorter leases, this is a material financial difference.
The Act also extends the standard lease extension to 990 years for both flats and houses, replacing the previous 90-year extension for flats and 50-year for houses. A 990-year lease is, for all practical purposes, a permanent solution, you are unlikely to encounter a lease-length problem on a property extended under the new rules within any timescale that matters to a living person. The two-year ownership requirement before you can extend or enfranchise has also been removed, which matters enormously for those buying leasehold properties and wanting to act immediately.
For anyone investing in property or thinking about moving house into a leasehold flat, these changes are significant. Homeowners in the Midlands and beyond who are currently assessing leasehold purchases have much more to weigh up than before. Lister Group, a Mansfield, Nottinghamshire-based property services firm covering mortgages, lettings management and buy-to-let services (lister-group.co.uk), is among the local specialists fielding sharply increased enquiries from people moving house into leasehold properties and from landlords trying to understand how the Act affects their buy-to-let positions. For anyone investing in property in the current climate, the interaction between lease length, enfranchisement costs, and mortgage eligibility is more complex than it might first appear.
What the Act still does not fix
The honest answer is: quite a lot. Retirement leasehold housing, properties sold under the event fee model where charges are triggered when you sell, sublet, or move into care, is addressed only partially. Campaigners at the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership had hoped for outright bans on certain event fee structures; what emerged is more cautious.
Managing agents remain a significant grievance. The Act does not introduce a statutory licensing regime for managing agents in England, despite this being a recommendation of the Law Commission. Wales moved ahead with its own approach; England has not. The practical consequence is that a leaseholder can now see more clearly what they are being charged, but the agent charging them still does not need to meet any professional qualification standard to operate. Transparency without accountability only gets you so far.
There is also the matter of implementation. Much of the Act is framework legislation, the detail sits in secondary regulations yet to be finalised or, in some cases, yet to be drafted. The valuation changes to enfranchisement costs, for instance, require a new prescribed method to be set by the government before they take effect. Leaseholders wanting to act now face the frustrating position of living under an Act whose most valuable provisions are not yet live.
The broader picture for UK housing policy
Leasehold reform UK homeowners have campaigned for sits within a wider housing policy conversation that is often unproductive precisely because it treats ownership as the only desirable outcome. The real scandal of the leasehold system was never that people did not own their buildings outright, it was that they had no meaningful power over how their homes were managed or how much they paid for that management. The Act moves the dial, but the underlying power imbalance between well-organised freeholder interests and atomised individual leaseholders is not resolved by legislation alone.
The inheritance tax changes introduced in the 2025 Budget have already complicated property succession planning for many families, and the leasehold question adds another layer of complexity for those passing on flat-owning estates. Separately, the broader conversation about accountability and power in British institutions reflects a similar pattern, legislation that acknowledges a problem without fully resolving the structural conditions that created it.
The property professionals best placed to advise on this are those who combine mortgage knowledge with letting expertise and a genuine understanding of local markets. Homeowners moving house or landlords considering buy-to-let purchases in areas with high leasehold concentrations, Greater Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, London, need advice that joins up enfranchisement rights with mortgage implications and rental yield projections. Lister Group’s scope across mortgages, lettings management and buy-to-let services means the firm sits at exactly this intersection, where being a landlord or homeowner in a leasehold property is no longer a simple tenure question but a financial planning one.
Should you buy a leasehold property right now?
The answer depends heavily on lease length, service charge history, the identity of the freeholder, and whether collective enfranchisement is realistically achievable in the building. A flat with 150 years remaining, a transparent managing agent, and a willing freeholder looks very different from a flat with 75 years on the clock and a freeholder notorious for obstructive behaviour. The Act improves the legal position in both cases, but it does not make the second flat a straightforward purchase.
What the reform does is shift the baseline. Leasehold is no longer quite the legal quicksand it was. The removal of marriage value, the 990-year extension, and the ground rent ban together represent the most meaningful legislative intervention in this area in a generation. Whether it represents enough depends entirely on which side of the negotiating table you have historically sat.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 actually change for existing leaseholders?
The Act bans ground rents on new residential leases, extends the standard lease extension to 990 years, abolishes marriage value in enfranchisement calculations, and introduces tougher service charge transparency rules. Existing leaseholders with doubling ground rent clauses receive more limited relief, as the Act primarily addresses future leases rather than retrospectively unwinding current contracts.
Has ground rent been abolished for existing leasehold properties?
Not entirely. Ground rents on new residential leases are set at a peppercorn (effectively zero) under the Act. For existing leases, the ground rent is not retrospectively abolished, though certain abusive clauses, such as doubling ground rents, face tighter restrictions. If you are paying ground rent now, the Act does not automatically reduce or eliminate it.
How much cheaper will it be to buy the freehold of a flat under the new rules?
The removal of marriage value is the biggest change, particularly for flats with fewer than 80 years remaining on the lease. In those cases, leaseholders previously had to share 50% of the property’s uplift in value with the freeholder; that payment is now gone. Savings vary considerably depending on the specific property, its value, and lease length, but some leaseholders could save tens of thousands of pounds.
Can I extend my lease or buy my freehold immediately after purchasing a leasehold property?
Yes. The Act removes the previous two-year ownership requirement, meaning you can apply for a lease extension or participate in collective enfranchisement from the day you complete your purchase. This is a significant practical change for buyers who want to act quickly to improve their lease position.
Are managing agents regulated under the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act?
No. The Act does not introduce statutory licensing or mandatory professional qualifications for managing agents in England. Service charge transparency requirements have been strengthened, and agents face tighter rules on administration charges, but there is no licensing regime equivalent to what the Law Commission recommended. Wales has taken a different legislative path on this issue.