Waiting for Leasehold Reform to Fix Your Short Lease? You Could Be Waiting Until 2028

What's Actually in Force, and What Isn't

The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 does, in law, abolish marriage value — the extra premium a leaseholder has to pay a freeholder once their lease drops below 80 years. But abolishing something in an Act of Parliament and actually switching it off are two different things. The valuation reforms, including the marriage value abolition, cannot commence until the government publishes secondary legislation setting new deferment and capitalisation rates. That consultation was first promised for summer 2025. As of mid-2026, it still hasn't launched. Legal commentators now put realistic commencement at 2027 to 2028, not this year and probably not next.

Why the Delay Keeps Slipping

There's also a legal cloud hanging over the whole reform. A High Court challenge to the changes was dismissed in October 2025, which cleared one obstacle, but a Court of Appeal hearing is expected in late 2026 or early 2027. Until that's resolved, freeholders and their lawyers have every incentive to slow-walk implementation rather than settle extension premiums under rules that might still change.

The 80-Year Cliff Edge Doesn't Wait for Parliament

Here's the part that matters if you actually own a short lease right now: marriage value only applies once your lease drops below 80 years remaining, and it gets more expensive the further below that line you fall — reform timeline or not. While you wait for legislation that may not land until 2028, your lease keeps counting down every single day. Extension premiums for a genuinely short lease commonly run into the tens of thousands of pounds once professional and freeholder fees are added, and that cost only grows the longer the lease is left to run down. Betting on a reform date that keeps moving is a bet against your own clock.

The Mortgage Problem Gets Worse Too

It isn't just the extension cost. Most mainstream mortgage lenders want at least 70 years left on a lease at the start of the mortgage term, and some set the bar at 80. Once a lease drops toward 55 years or below, most lenders won't touch it at all. That doesn't just affect you — it shrinks the pool of buyers who can even make an offer on your flat to cash purchasers and investors, exactly the buyers a traditional estate agent listing is least equipped to reach.

Why This Makes Traditional Estate Agent Sales Harder, Not Easier

A high street agent's business model depends on a steady flow of mortgaged buyers browsing the portals. When your lease has dropped into the range where most lenders decline to lend, that model breaks down — the listing sits, viewings dry up, and the agent's solution is usually a price cut, not a faster route to a buyer who doesn't need a mortgage in the first place. Every month a short-lease flat sits on the open market waiting for a mortgaged buyer who structurally can't get funding, the lease gets shorter and the eventual sale price typically gets worse.

What Actually Works for a Short Lease

You have two realistic options. Extend the lease before selling, which fixes the mortgageability problem but means paying the marriage value premium under today's rules, with no guarantee reform arrives before you need to move. Or sell directly to a cash buyer who isn't relying on mortgage finance and doesn't care what year the secondary legislation eventually lands, at a price that reflects the lease as it stands today rather than a hoped-for future that keeps getting pushed back.

The Bottom Line

If someone tells you to hold off selling because leasehold reform will make things easier soon, ask them for a date. There isn't one. The abolition of marriage value is real, it's in law, and it still is not switched on, with realistic estimates now pointing to 2027 or 2028. If you need to sell a short lease flat now, planning around legislation that keeps slipping is a gamble — and every month you wait, the lease gets shorter and the numbers get worse.