Freehold vs leasehold: how to check what a property is from the register

The tenure of a registered property is stated in the first entry of part A, the property register. Take an invented flat, Flat 6, Tanner’s Yard, Wharton Street, Maidstone, title number TT402917. Its first entry reads: “(11.05.2018) The Leasehold land demised by the lease referred to below which lies within the area shown edged with red on the plan of the above Title filed at the Registry and being Flat 6, Tanner’s Yard, Wharton Street, Maidstone.”

A freehold house uses a shorter sentence: “The Freehold land shown edged with red on the plan of the above Title filed at the Registry and being …”. The rest of the register, part by part, is explained on our title register page; this guide stays on tenure.

A leasehold property register contains enough about the lease to identify it, then short notes on what the lease permits. On the Maidstone flat the entries run like this.

The lease particulars. The second entry sets out three fields: “Date: 26 February 2018”, “Term: 125 years from 26 February 2018” and “Parties: (1) Tanner’s Yard Developments Limited (2) Priya Anand and Marcus Reid”. Those three fields are all the register gives about the lease itself.

Restrictions inside the lease. “The Lease prohibits or restricts alienation” means the lease limits the tenant’s freedom to sell, sublet, mortgage or share the flat. “The lease contains a right of pre-emption” means someone, usually the landlord, has first refusal if the flat is sold.

The landlord’s title. “The landlord’s title is registered” tells you the freehold (or the head lease) above this lease has its own register, and its title number is often given. “Registrar has not seen consent to sub-lease that superior lease may have required” flags a gap noticed when the lease was lodged.

What is missing. As at September 2026 the property register no longer includes any reference to the rent payable under a lease. The full lease, with its rent, service charge and repairing clauses, is usually held on file and comes as part of the conveyancing pack.

A registered leasehold flat sits on two registers: the leasehold title for the flat and the freehold title for the building it is part of. The leasehold title names the flat owner as proprietor. The freehold title names the freeholder, and its charges register (part C) says the land is subject to the leases listed in a schedule.

That Schedule of Leases has one row per registered flat lease: registration date, property, lease date, term and the tenant’s title number. For Tanner’s Yard the freehold register, title number TT188344, would show a row such as “11.05.2018, Flat 6, Tanner’s Yard, 26.02.2018, 125 years, TT402917”.

There can be a third register in between. Where a management company holds a head lease of the whole block, the flat leases are granted out of it, the flat’s register points to the head lease as the landlord’s title, and the freehold sits one level higher.

The flat’s title plan shows the land edged red, usually the building’s footprint rather than the flat’s layout; the lease plan shows the flat itself. Plan conventions are covered on our title plan page.

The table gives the registers to expect for common kinds of home in England and Wales.

Two points follow. A house is not always freehold, and which title to order depends on the question: owner, lease and mortgage on the leasehold title, freeholder and list of leases on the freehold title.

Share of freehold is a description used by agents and owners, not a tenure the register records. The flat is still leasehold, with its own title and a lease with a term. What changes is who owns the building’s freehold title: the flat owners, rather than an outside landlord.

The freehold register shows this in one of two ways. Where the owners set up a company, part B reads, for example, “PROPRIETOR: TANNER’S YARD (MAIDSTONE) FREEHOLD LIMITED of Flat 1, Tanner’s Yard, Wharton Street, Maidstone”, followed by its company number, and each flat owner holds a share in that company.

Without a company, part B names the flat owners as joint proprietors of the freehold, often with a Form A restriction because they hold it on trust for one another.

Take an invented converted house at 41 Elmgrove Road, Hornchurch, split into two flats, titles BGL730261 and BGL730262. Its freehold title, BGL215590, names Amira Hassan and Tom Bradley, the two flat owners, as proprietors. Each owns a leasehold flat and a share of the freehold; neither flat has become freehold.

A buyer of a share of freehold flat therefore still needs the lease: the years left still matter to a lender, and the lease covenants still govern repairs and use.

The register does not state the years remaining; it gives the term and the date it runs from, and you subtract. For the Maidstone flat, “Term: 125 years from 26 February 2018” runs to 26 February 2143. As at 30 September 2026, eight years and seven months have passed, leaving roughly 116 years and five months.

A shorter example: a 99-year lease running from 1988 has about 61 years left as at September 2026. Lenders and valuers treat the remaining term as a fact about value, so do the arithmetic before an offer, not after.

Count from the date after “from”, not from the date of the lease. Many leases run from an earlier date, for example “Term: 125 years from 1 January 2017” in a lease dated in 2018, and if the entry gives no start date the lease itself states it. A lease extension changes the particulars only once registered.

The register identifies the lease and stops. It does not show the ground rent, the service charge, the repairing obligations, the rules on pets or on subletting in detail, or what happens on a breach. All of that is in the lease itself.

Three more gaps catch people out. The register names the original parties to the lease, not the current landlord, who appears on the landlord’s own title, and it says the lease restricts alienation without giving the clause. It says nothing about whether rent or service charge is in arrears, so the leasehold title register and the lease itself go together.

An invented estate house at 18 Larkfield Rise, Ashford, title number TT609127, is marketed as “virtually freehold, 999-year lease, peppercorn rent”. The buyer orders the title register; the first entry reads “The Leasehold land … being 18 Larkfield Rise, Ashford”, with the particulars “Date: 4 June 2019”, “Term: 999 years from 1 January 2019” and “Parties: (1) Larkfield Homes Limited (2) Daniel Okafor”.

The register has answered the question. The house is leasehold, the freehold of the plot is a separate title owned by someone else, and the lease’s covenants bind the buyer for as long as the lease lasts, however small the rent. A 999-year term makes the lease easy to live with; it does not make it freehold.

The buyer’s next two orders are the freehold title for the plot, to see who holds the reversion now, and the conveyancing pack, to read the estate covenants and any rent review clause. A conveyancer will want both before exchange.

A leaseholder at the Maidstone flat wants to extend the lease and needs to know who the landlord is now. The leasehold register names the original landlord, Tanner’s Yard Developments Limited, but that company may have sold the freehold years ago.

The entry “The landlord’s title is registered”, with the freehold title number TT188344, points to the answer. The freehold title register’s part B gives the current freeholder’s name and address for service, and its part C shows whether the freehold is mortgaged. Reading part B for companies, joint owners and deceased owners is covered in our guide to who owns a property.

If the flat’s register points to a head lease instead, order that title first: the head lessee is the immediate landlord. The freeholder is found by climbing the chain of registers until a first entry reads “The Freehold land”.

A lease granted for more than seven years is registered with its own title number; a lease of seven years or less generally cannot be, so a twelve-month tenancy or a five-year business lease has no register of its own.

A lease of more than three years may be noted in the landlord’s charges register; a lease of three years or less generally cannot be noted. So a freehold house let on a twelve-month tenancy shows as freehold with no trace of the tenants, and the rights of people in actual occupation can bind a buyer without appearing in any register.

So “The Freehold land” tells you which estate the register covers, not that nobody else has a right to occupy: registered long leases appear in the schedule in part C, and short tenancies appear nowhere.

The class of title is stated at the beginning of part B. On a leasehold title the heading is usually “Title absolute”, the best class and the one granted in the majority of cases.

“Good leasehold” appears where the landlord’s title to grant the lease was not produced when the lease was registered. The registry cannot then confirm that the landlord had power to grant it or what burdens sit on the reversion. Buyers and lenders sometimes ask for an upgrade, which becomes possible once the landlord’s title is registered or produced.

Commonhold is the third possibility, available since 27 September 2004: a freehold form for buildings with communal parts in which each unit has its own freehold title, the common parts are held by a commonhold association of the unit-holders, and a community statement replaces the lease. The unit’s property register states that the freehold estate is registered as a freehold estate in commonhold land.