Extend your lease
Your lease is the document that gives you the right to occupy your home for a set period of time —usually for 99 or 125 years from the start date of the lease. Once your lease drops below 80 years in length, the value of your home can decrease, and it may become much more expensive to extend your lease. A shorter lease can also make it harder to sell your home or remortgage, so it’s best to consider extending before your lease drops under 80 years.
While shared owners don’t have a legal right to extend their lease, we understand this is important to many of our customers. That’s why we offer an informal lease extension process to help you do so.
If you own 100% of your home, you do have a legal right to extend your lease and therefore can choose to do so via our informal process or a formal (or statutory process), though this will involve higher fees and take longer than the informal route. Both options usually result in a 90-year extension with no further ground rent.
Which process applies to you?
Informal lease extension process
For more details, you can download the full lease extension guide below.
Here’s how it works:
- Start the process: Complete the lease extension instruction form and attach your lease and land registry title. We’ll review your details and contact you to guide you through the next steps. You’ll also need to make an initial payment to cover administration and surveyor fees.
- Valuation: We’ll instruct an independent surveyor to visit your home and carry out a valuation to determine the price for the lease extension (the premium).
- Proposal: We’ll send you a copy of the valuation along with a proposal letter offering the lease extension at the determined price.
- Confirmation: If you wish to proceed, confirm with us and provide your solicitor’s details. We’ll instruct our solicitor to work with yours to prepare the necessary legal documents.
- Completion: Once everything is signed and registered with the land registry, your lease will be officially extended.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 0203 815 0060 or email resaleandlegal@nhg.org.uk. We’re here to help!
Formal lease extension process
There is a formal (statutory) process for a lease extension. If you're a 100% owner (not a shared owner), you may choose this option. About 3% of our lessees carry out a lease extension this way. Please read through the full lease extension guide below for more details on this process. Note that you'll need to speak to your solicitor for more in-depth information and to start this process.
If Notting Hill Genesis is not your freeholder
If we are not your freeholder, extending your lease is still possible. Each situation is different so you may need to contact our Home Ownership Support team on 0203 815 0060 or email resaleandlegal@nhg.org.uk to discuss it further.
If our head lease is substantially longer than your lease, we may be able to extend it using our informal process. If the length of our head lease matches yours, we may need to contact your freeholder or managing agent for further investigation. Please download the full lease extension guide below for more information.
If you live in a house
If you are a shared house owner, your lease will usually entitle you to obtain the freehold on final staircasing. This means that, provided final staircasing takes place before the lease expires, a lease extension should not be necessary. Please check your lease to ensure you'll acquire the freehold on final staircasing and read more in the full lease extension guide below.
Lease extension guide
Download our full lease extension guide to read the requirements and see which option makes most sense for you.
Lease extension FAQs
You do not need to extend your lease and for many people this may not be financially an option, however it is advisable to do so.
The framework the law sets for establishing the cost of the premium calculates this differently after the lease drops under 80 years, which means the premium will be much higher. It will also increase at a steeper rate each year. The lower the amount of years on your lease, the higher the premium will be.
Banks are hesitant to lend money to buy properties if the lease is under 80 years so they become more difficult to sell, and the sales price will also be reduced.
The surveyors valuation is valid for three months, however we give you an extra three months in which to complete.
If you’ve not completed within six months from the date on the valuation we cannot extend the deadline and we’ll require an updated valuation from the surveyor. This will cost £200 +VAT and it will give you a further six months in which to complete. Please note that the premium will have increased a bit since the last valuation, however if the lease drops under 80 years in this time, the premium will increase considerably.
We’ll only use the valuation by the surveyors nominated by us and we are not able to consider any other valuation. The surveyor is instructed to do the valuation based on a fair price which is the price that he feels would be arrived at after a period of negotiation. We will not enter into any negation of the premium.
Yes. The surveyor will discount the value of any improvements made by you, provided you can show that these were approved by us. If these did not receive prior approval, you might need to contact your property management officer to obtain retrospective consent before we can proceed.
A RICS surveyor estimates the price that you will pay. The law sets out a framework that is used to work out the premium, and this framework is used by the surveyor. This is based on the number of years left on your lease and the current market value of your flat. It also takes into account ground rent.
As with any legal completion, you will need to pay any money owed on your account before the lease extension can complete. If you have large arrears on your account, we may ask you to clear these before you can start the process, even if you have worked out a payment plan with your property management officer (PMO). If you have had made irregular payments over time that have resulted in arrears we will insist on a direct debit being set up with your PMO before you can compete.