Yes, in the vast majority of cases you can pay to extend the lease on the property. There are two different ways to go about this.
Statutory lease extension
Under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, leasehold owners have a statutory right to a lease extension which they can initiate by serving a Section 42 Notice on the freeholder. “The Notice stipulates the amount you are offering to pay along with other details, such as the 90-year extension and the “Nil” ground rent to which you are entitled under the Act,” explains an industry expert. In order to be eligible for a lease extension, you must have owned the flat for a minimum of 2 years and the original lease must have been granted for at least 21 years.
If you are contemplating the purchase of a short lease property, you obviously won’t be meeting these criteria, but the seller might. If this is indeed the case, you can ask for a statutory lease extension to be initiated as a condition of purchase, with the benefit assigned to you on completion of the sale.
Of course, there is no reason why you have to follow the statutory process at all. There’s nothing to stop any leaseholder from approaching the freeholder with an informal request to extend the lease at any time and without any qualifying criteria. Both parties are free to negotiate as they please, with any agreement reached becoming fully legally binding once signed.
However, if you do enter into this type of informal arrangement, you won’t benefit from any statutory protection under the 1993 Act. You may also have less negotiating power with the freeholder who may decide to make a take-it-or-leave-it offer with terms that are favourable to them, but not so much to you.
Interestingly, the future of residential leases is set to change in the near future. The government is planning to introduce far-reaching leasehold reforms allowing leaseholders to extend their lease up to 999 years with no ground rent payable.