Share of freehold vs leasehold vs commonhold: what you'd actually own

The listing says "share of freehold" and the agent says it like it settles something. No ground rent, no freeholder, none of that leasehold nonsense. And in the same breath, sometimes, "it's basically commonhold".

Here's the plain version. Share of freehold is leasehold with a better landlord. You still have a lease, it still runs down, and it still needs extending. Commonhold is the tenure with no lease at all, and after twenty-two years on the statute book it barely exists. The two get conflated by agents, by listings and by a fair amount of what's published online, and the difference decides what you'll pay to keep your flat sellable in twenty years.

This is England and Wales. Scotland got rid of residential leasehold long ago.

What each one actually is

Three tenures, one table, and then the part that matters.

Leasehold is the default for flats. You own a lease, a right to occupy for a fixed term, from a freeholder who owns the building. You pay them ground rent if the lease says so, you pay a service charge for the building, and when the term gets short you pay them a premium to extend it. The short leases post covers why the number 80 matters and the ground rent post covers what's changed there.

Share of freehold is the same lease, with the freehold owned by the flat owners together. Usually the freehold sits in a company and each flat owner holds a share in it, or for small buildings a handful of owners hold it jointly in their own names. The 1993 Act gives leaseholders a right to buy the freehold this way, and section 13 requires the claim to be made by qualifying tenants of "not less than one-half of the total number of flats" in the building. Once they own it, they are the landlord, collectively.

Commonhold is something else entirely. Under Part 1 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, in force since September 2004, each unit-holder owns the freehold of their own flat and a commonhold association, a company limited by guarantee of which every unit-holder is a member, owns the common parts. There is no lease. There is no term to run out, no ground rent, no freeholder, and the building is run under a commonhold community statement rather than a stack of individual leases that may not match.

The thing about share of freehold that catches people

The lease is still there. Owning a share of the freehold doesn't dissolve your lease; it makes you one of the people your lease is granted by. The 90-year term written into it in 1985 keeps counting down whether the freeholder is a pension fund or your upstairs neighbour.

This is the thing to check before you get excited. Plenty of share-of-freehold flats sit on leases with 70 or 60 years left, because the owners bought the freehold, felt they'd solved the problem, and never got round to the second step.

The second step is the fix, and it's usually easy. A freehold company that the owners control can grant itself new leases, and the common practice is for it to grant each flat a 999-year lease at a peppercorn rent. If that's been done, you're in as good a position as leasehold gets. If it hasn't, ask why, and find out what it will cost and whether every owner will agree, because extending your own lease through a company you only part-own still needs the company to act.

Leases in the block may not match. Each flat has its own lease, granted at its own time, and in a converted house they can differ on what's demised, who repairs what and how costs are shared. Sharing the freehold doesn't harmonise them. It just means the people who'd have to agree to harmonise them are all on the same side.

And you're the freeholder now, with everything that implies. The building's insurance, the roof, the accounts, the neighbour who won't pay their share. In a well-run block of six this is a WhatsApp group and an annual meeting. In a badly run one, it's the reason the flat's cheap. The government's own commonhold white paper of March 2025 makes the point bluntly: share of freehold "retains the fundamentals of a landlord and leaseholder relationship" and risks replacing "one unaccountable decision maker for another".

Commonhold: real in law, almost absent in practice

Commonhold has been available since 2004. The white paper puts its take-up at "fewer than 20 developments being built comprising fewer than 200 commonhold units" in the two decades since.

Our own data agrees. Across active listings in and around London in September 2026, with a known tenure, about 49 per cent are leasehold, 39 per cent freehold, and 11 per cent share of freehold. Commonhold is seven listings. Not seven per cent. Seven. That's one market, counted from the tenure each listing states, not a national census, but it's the same shape the government describes.

So when a listing or an agent describes a flat as commonhold, or "effectively commonhold", the odds are overwhelming that it's share of freehold and someone has reached for the grander word. Ask to see the title. Commonhold land is registered as such; a share-of-freehold flat's title is a lease.

What's changing, and what isn't, as at September 2026. The government intends commonhold to become the default tenure for new flats. The white paper sets out the reformed model, and the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, published on 27 January 2026 and in pre-legislative scrutiny since February, proposes to ban "the use of leasehold for most new flats". A draft Bill in scrutiny has not been introduced to Parliament. Nothing in it changes what you'd own today, and nothing in it converts an existing share-of-freehold block into a commonhold one. That will need the owners to choose it and, under section 3 of the 2002 Act as it stands, the consent of the freeholder, every leaseholder with a lease over 21 years, and anyone with a charge over the land. One lender saying no is enough.

What each means for the money

Ground rent. A leaseholder pays whatever the lease says. A share-of-freehold owner pays it too, technically, to the company they part-own, which is why the 999-year-at-a-peppercorn regrant matters. A commonhold unit-holder pays none, because there's no lease for it to be in.

Lease extension. For a leaseholder it's a premium to a third party, and the statutory route under section 56 of the 1993 Act gives 90 years at a peppercorn. For a share-of-freehold owner it's a decision among neighbours, usually cheap in cash and occasionally expensive in goodwill. For commonhold, the question doesn't exist.

Service charges and major works. All three pay for the building. The difference is who decides. Under share of freehold and commonhold the owners do, which is better when they're competent and worse when they're not, and you can't tell which from the listing.

Selling. A short lease is a short lease whatever the tenure, and lenders read the term, not the word "freehold" in the particulars. Share of freehold on a 999-year lease is straightforward to sell. Share of freehold on a 62-year lease with four owners who don't speak to each other is not, and that's the version to price for.

What to do about it

Before you offer, in this order.

1. Get the tenure from the title, not the listing. "Share of freehold" on the particulars can mean a company, a joint ownership between named individuals, or an intention. Nookaly shows the tenure the listing states on every flat it scores, and treats it the same way you should: as a claim to check. Ask your conveyancer to confirm what's registered.
2. Find the remaining term on the lease. This is the number that decides everything and it's the one people forget to ask about on share-of-freehold flats. If it's under 999 years, ask whether the freehold company has granted new leases and, if not, why not.
3. Find out how the freehold is held. A company at Companies House, with accounts and directors you can look up, or a handful of individuals on the title. Both work. The second gets complicated when one of them dies or sells.
4. Ask how many flats participate. In a block where three of eight owners hold the freehold, you'd be buying into a landlord that five of your neighbours didn't join. That's not necessarily bad, but it's a different building from one where everyone's in.
5. Read the last three years of accounts and the minutes, if there are any. With share of freehold, the quality of the building's management is the quality of the neighbours, and the accounts are how you meet them before you move in.
6. If anyone says commonhold, ask to see the register. If the title is a lease, it isn't commonhold, and the person telling you otherwise doesn't know what they're selling.
7. Price the lease, not the label. A share of freehold on a long lease is worth something. A share of freehold on a short one is a lease extension you'll have to organise yourself, with people you haven't met yet.

The honest summary

Share of freehold is leasehold where you and your neighbours are the landlord. That's often a good thing and it's never the same as commonhold, which has no lease at all and, twenty-two years after it became law, accounts for seven listings in around a hundred and fifty-seven thousand. The reform that would change this is a draft Bill, and it applies to new flats, not the one you're looking at.

The question isn't which word is on the listing. It's how many years are left on the lease underneath it, and whether the people who could fix that are the sort who will.

Worth reading next: short leases and the 80-year rule, ground rent and what's still only proposed, and what a service charge should look like.

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This is general information, not legal or financial advice. Leasehold law in England and Wales is mid-reform and the position described here is as at September 2026. Have your conveyancer check the registered title and the lease before making a decision.