Selling A Short Lease Flat in Soho

Quick navigation

If you are a leasehold flat owner in the West End London district of Soho, there is a good chance that your property might have a short lease – meaning it has under 70 or 80 years left to run. You might find that there are some challenged involved with attempting to find a buyer for this type of flat, but you also have a few different options for still getting a quick and fair sale.

1. Defining a short lease flat in London’s Soho district
2. Why Soho has so many flats with short leases
3. How to resolve a short lease at your Soho flat
4. Problems with trying to sell a short lease flat in Soho
5. Options to find a buyer for your Soho short lease flat
6. Soho short lease flats: Frequently asked questions

Defining a short lease flat in London’s Soho district

Soho, the famous London West End neighbourhood in the City of Westminster, is known around the world for its many theatres and other entertainment venues. It’s also home to a thriving nightlife, a wide range of shops and other businesses, as well as residential properties that are either freehold or leasehold.

Freehold properties are those where the owner outright has the legal possession of the home and the land on which it was constructed. Leasehold homes are those where someone signs a lease agreement with the freeholder, agreeing to pay ground rent and service charges in exchange for having ownership of the unit for a specific number of years.

And many of leasehold properties are flats that have short leases, as the result of several different factors. Leasehold agreements often start with 99 years, but some might have as many as 125 years to start. Generally, a short lease flat is considered to be one that has less than 70 years remaining, although leases of under 80 years can also be seen as short.

The following guide explains reasons why Soho has so many short lease flat, and also details the potential complications that can be involved with owning a short lease flat. It also outlines various options for resolving a flat with a short lease, including strategies to find a buyer.

Why Soho has so many flats with short leases

Soho, like other famous London neighbourhoods, is known for having a large number of short lease flats, particularly when compared with other parts of the country.

One of the main reasons why Soho has so many flats with short leases is that the homes were built on land owned by a number of family estates starting in the 19th century. Whilst some of the flats were sold with regular lease terms of 99 or 125 years, others had very short leases from the start, some under 20 years. And as years go by, even regular length leases become considered short when they drop below the threshold of 70 or 80 years remaining.

Present day, the owners of much of Soho’s leasehold properties have an incentive to keep the leases short in case they need to end the agreement when a lucrative redevelopment opportunity arises for the building. One example is the Raymond Estate, which covers 70 acres throughout Soho and was developed by the late publisher Paul Raymond, as the website Who Owns England? says.

How to resolve a short lease at your Soho flat

If you have determined that your Soho flat is considered to be a short lease property, you have a few options available for how you could potentially resolve this situation.

Buying the freehold of your flat

One strategy that would permanently fix the problem of having a short lease at your flat would be purchasing the freehold of the property from its current owner. This would then make you the outright legal owner of the flat and it would no longer be subject to a leasehold agreement, because you would instead own the property until any time that you decided to sell it.

Although this is one solution, it is also likely to be very expensive and you might not have the budget or willingness to spend that much on buying the freehold. And another potential barrier to pursuing this option is that the freeholder may not have any interest in selling it.

Asking the freeholder to extend the lease

A second option that you could pursue is to ask the freehold if they would be willing to extend the duration of your lease. For example, if it only has 50 years left on the lease agreement, you could inquire about extending the lease to a standard 99 or 125 years remaining. This would mean that you leasehold agreement would no longer be considered to be short.

But this potentials strategy also has some challenges, including the fact that the freeholder might be unwilling to grant any extension. Even if they are open to extending the lease, the costs and time involved with securing the extension might be something you’re opposed to.

Selling the flat without extending the leasehold

And the third step you could take with your short lease flat is to decide against trying to extend the duration and instead look for a buyer without making any changes to the lease.

There are some difficulties involved with trying to find a buyer for a flat that has a short lease, and the next section of this guide explains what those are. But the good news is that selling a short lease flat in Soho is not impossible, as some viable options exist. For example, you could sell to a legitimate quick home buyer like LDN Properties that has plenty of experience with purchasing short lease flats. A sale should take just a few weeks and won’t charge any fees.

Problems with trying to sell a short lease flat in Soho

If you have settled on the option of attempting to sell your Soho short lease, before deciding which method you would like to use for finding a buyer, it’s worth learning about some of the justifications for why it might be more difficult to sell your home rather than a long lease flat.

One complication you might encounter is that buyers who need to get approved for a mortgage to be able to afford purchasing your flat could get rejected by lenders.

That’s because home loan providers only approve mortgages if they think they’ll be able to resell the property should the borrower default on the loan in the future. If someone does default, the lender can then seek a buyer for the home and use the sale proceeds to recoup their outstanding mortgage owed. But many mortgage providers have concerns that selling a short lease flat could be hard, as Redbrick Management says on its website.

If a buyer is unable to get the mortgage that they need for purchasing your flat, they couldn’t afford your home and therefore no sale would happen.

Beyond that problem, another issue with trying to sell a short lease flat is that there might be fewer people interested in owning this type of home, compared to flats that have regular length lease agreements. That’s because certain buyers will have doubts about owning such a home, including the fact their long-term ownership of the flat is uncertain – particularly if it’s unclear whether options like buying the freehold or getting a lease extension are available.

Nevertheless, as the next section will show, you have a few choices to search for a buyer, and some of those methods may produce a quick sale that won’t charge any commission, such as selling to a quick buyer like LDN Properties that has bought short lease flats in the past.

Options to find a buyer for your Soho short lease flat

If you have decided that you want to sell your short lease flat in Soho, the four typical options are selling to a quick buyer, selling through a property auction, selling with an estate agent, or selling without any third-party help. All four of these selections have unique advantages and disadvantages for factors such as time taken, whether they charge commission, and more.

Be sure to carefully review the overview of the four options below so that you can identify the one that best suits your individual needs and goals with the sale of your flat.

Selling to a quick buyer

Quick buyers are companies like LDN Properties, launched in 2003, that have the funds available to make fast and competitive offers for buying a wide range of freehold and leasehold homes. And they have plenty of experience buying “problem” properties like short lease flats, so they can be a speedy and zero-fee way to sell without having to extend your lease.

The selling timeline with a quick buyer is typically just a few short weeks, and that includes the important last steps of exchanging contracts and receiving your full sale proceeds. You’ll find that this is often the speediest way to sell a flat among the four available options.

It’s a simple process that begins when you call the quick buyer to discuss your home, and within an hour they should be able to make a tentative offer for purchasing it. If you agree to that offer, the company will send a representative to assess the interior and exterior of your flat before the quick buyer makes its final offer. And if you accept the final offer, the quick buyer will work speedily with your solicitor or other legal representative to sign the necessary documents and complete the other remaining tasks needed to finalise the sale of your flat.

Another great advantage of selling to a quick buyer is that the honest companies won’t charge you any commission. This guarantees that you can limit your selling costs and also receive the entire proceeds from the sale of your home. That makes quick buyers a good choice for those owners whose top goals with selling include reducing their expenses as much as they can.

Selling through a property auctioneer

Selling a flat via an auctioneer will mean minimal work on your part, because the auctioneer will handle all the key steps of the sale. This starts with creating and advertising a listing that describes your flat and includes photographs of it, hosting the auction and overseeing the successful sale of your home – although it’s no guarantee that your home will sell.

There are a few downsides involved with selling this way, including the fact that you will have to pay the auctioneer commission if your home sells. This fee will be taken out of the final sale proceeds, which will add to your costs. Some auctioneers could be willing to have the buyer pay a share of your expenses, so it’s worth asking to find out whether this might be possible.

Another negative aspect of auctioning a property is that it can take a long time, potentially a number of months, from first deciding to sell this way through to completing a sale. And if your home doesn’t find a buyer, you would then have to begin again with searching for someone else to purchase your flat, which would inevitably extend your selling timeline even further.

Some auctioneers might also have never sold a short lease flat before, which could imply that they might struggle with knowing how to get potential buyers interested in your home.

Selling with an estate agent

If you are trying to avoid having to put much effort into selling your short lease flat, another solution is enlisting the support of an estate agent. They will be in charge of producing and marketing a listing, as well as arranging viewings to give prospective buyers a tour of your flat, and then trying to guide a serious offer through to the exchange of contracts.

For doing all of this work, estate agents will charge you commission that will be subtracted immediately from your eventual sale proceeds. If your goal is to minimise your expenses with the sale of your home, you may want to consider no-fee options, like contacting a quick buyer.

This can also be quite a slow way to sell a flat, possibly taking months or even more than an entire year. And remember that someone can make an offer to buy your home but later cancel it, and they can walk away from the sale if contracts have not already been exchanged. If this happens, you would need to restart looking for a buyer, which could take a long time.

Selling without any third-party help

Yet another way to try finding a buyer for your short lease Soho flat is to sell on your own. This means that you would be responsible for every aspect of the sale, from the initial creation and advertising of the listing through to scheduling viewings and trying to exchange contracts. It’ll be a lot of work and this won’t be something you can simply try to do in your spare time.

Selling without any assistance can also take a long time, and you should not be surprised if it takes a number of months or longer to find a buyer for your flat. And then if you do get a genuine offer, there’s still the chance that the buyer could change their mind and rescind it later. They can do this without any penalty if you have not yet exchanged contracts. You would have to start over with looking for a new buyer, which will extend your overall selling timeline.

One of the only clear benefits of selling a flat on your own is that you would not need to pay any commission to a third party such as an estate agent or an auctioneer, which assists in reducing your expenses. But you could discover that any saving you make as a result is cancelled out by however much money you have to spend on the various tasks involved with selling the flat.

✅ How do I know whether or not my home in Soho has a short lease?

If you’re the owner of a leasehold flat in Soho, you will be the legal owner of the unit for a set number of years that will have been determined in your original lease agreement that you signed with the freeholder, who is the outright owner of the property and its land. If the lease has less than 70 years, or in some cases less than 80 years, left then it’s seen as a short lease.

✅ Are there any downsides to having a short lease at my Soho flat?

Yes, there can be some problems associated with owning a short lease flat, including the fact that these homes are considered to be less valuable than properties in the same neighbourhood that have long leases remaining. Another issue with owning a short lease flat is that it can sometimes be harder to attract buyers when you make the decision to sell the home.

✅ What options do I have for resolving my Soho flat having a short lease?

You have a few different options for how to resolve this situation, with one being to ask your freeholder about securing an extension to the lease’s duration, although this can be a costly and lengthy process. Another option is asking to buy the flat’s freehold outright, but that can be very expensive. And the third option is to try and sell your flat without extending the lease.

✅ Why are short lease flats seen as harder to sell than long lease Soho flats?

One explanation is that many buyers will view a short lease flat as a less valuable property because they will own it for far fewer years than a flat has a long lease. Another reason is that many buyers might struggle to get approved for a mortgage to buy a short lease home, because lenders are wary about the value of these properties should they have to resell them.

✅ What options can I pursue if I want to seek a buyer for short lease flat in Soho?

You have a few different strategies available for trying to secure a buyer, and these include selling to quick home buyer like LDN Properties that has experience with purchasing short lease flats, selling at a property auction, selling through an estate agent, or selling on your own. Take time to review all four options as they vary in how they take and whether they charge fees.

✅ Which of the options for selling my Soho short lease flat will charge commission?

If you opt for selling your flat using the services of either an auctioneer or an estate agent, they will charge you commission if they find a buyer for your home. This will increase your expenses because the fee is subtracted right away from the eventual sale proceeds. But if you decide to sell your home on your own or to a no-fee quick buyer then you won’t pay any commission.

✅ How quickly will I be able to sell my flat in Soho that has a short lease?

It depends on which method you choose for selling your flat, because selling to a quick buyer such as LDN Properties should only take a few short weeks, and that includes the time needed for the exchange of contracts and paying the full sale proceeds to you. But if sell the flat on your own, via an estate agent, or at an auction, the selling process can sometimes take months.