Why extend your lease?
In very modern flats, sometimes the lease length can be as much as 999 years and so the idea of needing a lease extension is not one that springs to mind, however, for older leases and some modern leases, where leases may be much lower, there is sometimes a need to extend the lease.
The primary reason for the lease extension is that once the remaining term of a lease drops below 80 years, the cost of an extension of the lease rises by what is called the ‘marriage’ value. For the leaseholder, this equates to a substantial increase in the cost of a lease extension so we would always advise extending before the 80 year threshold.
The other important reason for extending a lease is that leases of shorter duration, i.e. less than 60 years, can prohibit or make difficult the sale of a property because banks are often reluctant to lend against the shorter term lease, so you should give consideration to extending before the 60 year threshold also.
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