Flats in England now take over 46 days to sell – more than three times longer than in Scotland, where the average is just 16 days, according to research by property website Zoopla. The stark divide highlights a deepening crisis in the English flat market, where a combination of high service charges, unresolved fire safety defects and a convoluted leasehold system is trapping sellers and deterring buyers.
The selling time disparity
Zoopla’s data reveals that flats in England sit on the market for 46 to 47 days before a sale is agreed. By contrast, the average selling time in Scotland is 16 days. The gap is not random: Scotland operates a fundamentally different property law framework. Residential leases are capped at 20 years, and all flats are held on a freehold title in the form of commonhold, with owners contributing to a collective maintenance fund. The long leasehold system that governs flats in England and Wales does not apply there. Experts say the Scottish model removes much of the complexity and uncertainty that blights English flat sales.
In London, the situation is even more acute. Reports indicate that flats in the capital can take an average of 204 days to sell, and nearly half of all one-bedroom and studio flats are now selling for less than their original purchase price. Across England and Wales, 38 per cent of new build flats sold at a loss in 2025, with the figure rising to nearly two-thirds in the North East. The market is also being flooded by landlords leaving the buy-to-let sector, further distorting supply and demand.
The specific issues dragging down valuations
A central problem is the cost and complexity of service charges. National average service charges for flats range from £1,100 to £2,500 a year, but in London that figure jumps to £2,000–£4,000, and in new-build or luxury developments it can exceed £5,000. Between 2019 and 2024, average annual service charges in England and Wales rose by 33.9 per cent, from £1,717 to £2,300; in the last year alone, the increase was 11 per cent. Lenders factor these charges into affordability calculations, and an estimated 37 per cent of flats in England and Wales are now effectively unmortgageable because their service charges exceed 1 per cent of the property value – a threshold many lenders will not accept. Leaseholders do have the right to see invoices and challenge unfair charges, and major works costing more than £250 per leaseholder require a Section 20 consultation, but the upward trajectory of costs continues to hit buyers’ borrowing power.
Fire safety concerns have compounded the crisis. In the year to March 2025, almost half (45 per cent) of audited blocks of flats in England failed fire safety checks, requiring remedial action for issues such as blocked escape routes, failing emergency lighting and faulty alarms. The Building Safety Act 2022 placed greater responsibility on building owners and managers to prove compliance, but the legacy of the cladding crisis means that many flats remain frozen in the market – listed for sale but with no realistic path to completion because buyers cannot secure a mortgage and insurers refuse cover. Remediation work on buildings with “life-critical” hazards has been described as “agonisingly slow”, with a significant number of affected blocks still untouched.
The leasehold system itself adds another layer of difficulty. The Leasehold Reform Act 2024, which received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024, has already removed the two-year waiting period for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. For existing leases, ground rents will be capped at £250 a year for a transitional period of 40 years before dropping to a peppercorn; new leases granted after 30 June 2022 already have ground rents capped at a peppercorn. A further Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, announced for the 2026-27 parliamentary session, aims to phase out long residential leases for flats in England and Wales altogether, replacing them with commonhold. The proposed reforms also include the abolition of forfeiture, a controversial power that allows freeholders to repossess a property for breaches of the lease. Yet the very prospect of reform has created uncertainty. Some reports suggest that buyers are holding off in areas like London because they do not know what the new rules will look like, further depressing demand.
Down valuations by surveyors are also stymying sales. A down valuation occurs when a mortgage lender’s surveyor assesses a property at a lower price than the buyer has agreed to pay, forcing the buyer to make up the shortfall or renegotiate. Factors behind the increase in such valuations include stricter lending criteria, rapid local price growth not reflected in comparable data, surveyor caution in an uncertain market, and reduced transaction volumes that limit recent sales evidence. Economic uncertainty and concerns over the sustainability of house price inflation have also played a role. Buyers can challenge a down valuation by providing evidence of comparable sales, renegotiating the price, increasing their deposit, or seeking a fresh valuation from another surveyor, but the process frequently causes sales to collapse.
The impact on first-time buyers
For first-time buyers, these problems are shutting down what has traditionally been the most affordable route onto the property ladder. Experts say that lenders are often unwilling to offer mortgages on flats in blocks with a high proportion of rental properties, because the presence of buy-to-let landlords can indicate management issues and increase the risk of service charge disputes. At the same time, the combined weight of onerous leasehold conditions, fire safety fears and rising service charges is narrowing the pool of mortgageable flats. Higher interest rates and broader economic uncertainty have further squeezed affordability. With average flat prices in some London areas falling by over 20–30 per cent, those who do manage to buy risk immediate negative equity.
The stranglehold is clear: a flat, once the obvious first step onto the ladder, now carries risks that many buyers and lenders are unwilling to accept. The Leasehold Reform Act 2024 and the forthcoming bill offer a long-term promise of change, but for the hundreds of thousands of flat owners currently stuck with high charges, safety defects and unsellable properties, the immediate picture is bleak. Nearly half of audited blocks still fail fire safety checks. Remediation work progresses slowly. Surveyors remain cautious. And the gap between England’s 46-day selling time and Scotland’s 16 days is a daily reminder of what a functioning flat market could look like.
