Freehold flats, Section 5B notices and buying your freeholder out
What a Section 5B auction notice means, what you can do with 86 years left, deposits when you buy with sitting tenants, whether a freehold flat is legitimate, and how fixing vs staying on a tracker affects selling.
My freeholder has served a Section 5B notice because they're selling the freehold at auction - should I try to buy it myself, or is it simpler to just sell my flat given it only has 86 years left on the lease?
You can lawfully try to buy the freehold under the Section 5B procedure, and with 86 years remaining you still have the standard statutory options (including a 90‑year lease extension under the 1993 Act), but there is no statutory "years left" cutoff that tells you to sell rather than buy — the choice is commercial. A Section 5B notice must say the landlord proposes to sell by auction, give the principal terms and allow qualifying tenants a period of not less than 2 months to accept or nominate a purchaser. Buying at auction or nominating a purchaser gives you control, which can make sense if you want management powers; keeping an 86‑year lease means marriage value is not yet triggered by statute, so an extension will usually be cheaper than once you fall below 80 years. Breach of the s.5 regime carries criminal penalties and a purchase‑notice remedy, so check the notice carefully and get a valuation before committing.
Buying the freehold for a single flat rarely pays off unless you want active control — most leaseholders end up extending the lease rather than buying the freehold.
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If I buy a house with tenants who only have four months left on their current tenancy, can I still get their deposit properly protected given how little time is left?
Yes — you can protect a tenancy deposit even with only four months left: the statutory 30‑day protection rule applies to whoever actually received the deposit, and there is no minimum remaining term for a scheme to accept a deposit. If the outgoing landlord has already protected the deposit in an authorised scheme you should arrange a change‑of‑landlord transfer with that scheme rather than re‑taking the cash; all three authorised schemes allow transfers and record changes. If the deposit was not protected, you can still place it in a scheme and serve the prescribed information, but late protection does not erase liability for earlier breaches — a court can still order a penalty of between 1× and 3× the deposit under s.214. At tenancy end, schemes expect return within about 10 days once both parties agree the amount; see our guide on resolving deposit disputes and our deposit protection comparison for practical next steps.
Tenant deposit dispute: how to resolve it legally in England & Wales
Deposit protection scheme comparison: DPS vs MyDeposits vs TDS
What actually is a freehold flat, and can you legitimately own one without a lease at all?
You can legitimately hold a registered freehold title that comprises a flat, but a "freehold flat" is a non‑standard and often problematic title because English property law has no dedicated lease‑free framework for horizontally divided buildings. Land Registry will register freehold titles to parts of buildings (including so‑called flying freeholds), but without leases you generally lack the tidy mutual covenants leases provide for repairs, insurance, access and management; creating equivalent cross‑covenants is possible but bespoke and can be cumbersome. Mortgage lenders routinely treat freehold flats as non‑standard and may demand additional safeguards or refuse to lend without a proper scheme of rights. In short: owning a freehold flat is lawful, but expect conveyancing complications and lender resistance that can affect saleability and finance.
I'm on a punishing tracker rate on one flat and could fix for two years and immediately free up nearly £700 a month, but fixing means I can't try to sell again during that period — is it better to lock in the lower payment and hold, or stay flexible on the tracker in case I want to sell sooner?
You are not legally prevented from selling during a fixed term, but fixing usually means you will face contractual early‑repayment charges (ERCs) on redemption — the mortgage can be redeemed to sell, but the lender will typically levy the ERC disclosed in your mortgage terms. The law (FCA/MCOB) requires lenders to disclose ERCs; they are commonly expressed as a percentage of the outstanding balance (often between about 1% and 5%), but there is no statutory tariff and figures are lender‑specific. That makes your decision a straight commercial calculation: compare the fixed‑rate monthly saving you expect (check the exact figure, not an estimate) against likely ERCs plus selling costs and the chance you will actually sell within two years. If you genuinely plan to hold and the fixed saving net of ERCs is larger, fixing can be sensible; if there is a real prospect of marketing and selling within the fixed period, staying on the tracker preserves flexibility. Always get the exact ERC figure from your lender and run the maths before switching.
Last reviewed August 2026.
