Flatscope research · 2026-06-09
One year after the disclosure rulebook was pulled, 62.3% of leasehold flat listings still omit a key figure
In May 2025 the property industry's material-information guidance was withdrawn, leaving disclosure to the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. One year on, we sampled 893 live flat listings across London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol and checked each one for the three numbers every leasehold buyer needs before offering. The lease length, the service charge and the ground rent. We counted a figure as disclosed even when it only appears buried in the description text. These are the results.
of leasehold flat listings omit at least one of lease length, service charge or ground rent
do not state the ground rent
do not state the service charge
do not state the lease length
Base: 827 leasehold or share-of-freehold flat listings out of 893 flats sampled. Tenure itself was not stated on 5.2% of flat listings.
City by city
| City | Flats sampled | Lease length missing | Service charge missing | Ground rent missing | Any of the three |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Birmingham | 152 | 35% | 36.4% | 34.3% | 60.1% |
| Bristol | 150 | 14% | 30.8% | 62.2% | 72% |
| Leeds | 150 | 27.9% | 35.7% | 35% | 57.1% |
| London | 287 | 27.4% | 43.6% | 56% | 65% |
| Manchester | 154 | 20.7% | 44.4% | 43% | 54.1% |
Why these three numbers matter
The lease length decides whether a flat is mortgageable and what it will cost to keep. Below roughly 80 years, extending has historically attracted marriage value and the cost rises as the lease shortens, a position now mid-reform, so buyers need the number early, not after a survey is paid for.
The service charge is a running cost that can exceed council tax several times over. In our sample it reached five figures on some London listings. A buyer who cannot see it cannot budget.
The ground rent determines exposure to escalation clauses, the issue at the centre of the leasehold scandal. It was the most commonly omitted figure in our sample.
The legal context
Until May 2025, National Trading Standards' material information guidance (Parts A, B and C) set out what property listings should disclose, including tenure, lease length and the recurring charges. That guidance was withdrawn on 8 May 2025 after the consumer-protection provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 came into force on 6 April 2025.
Under the Act, omitting material information that the average consumer needs to make an informed decision is an unfair commercial practice. The Competition and Markets Authority can now enforce directly, with civil penalties of up to £300,000 or 10% of global turnover, whichever is higher. Separately, many banned practices can also constitute criminal offences. This study measures what listings disclose. It does not assess any individual listing's or agent's legal position, and nothing here is legal advice.
Methodology, in full
- Sample. 893unique live for-sale flat listings on the UK's largest property portal, collected on 2026-06-09. Newest-listed ordering per city, so the sample reflects the current market, not a historical archive. Cities and counts are in the table above. Duplicate listings across result pages were removed by listing identifier.
- Fields checked. Tenure, length of lease, annual service charge and annual ground rent, read from the listing's structured fields and from the listing description text.
- The generous rule. A figure counts as disclosed if it appears anywhere on the listing, including buried in description prose (for example a ground rent stated mid-paragraph, or an explicit peppercorn). Values of "Ask agent", "TBC", blank, or zero where zero is the portal's placeholder were counted as not disclosed. A genuine peppercorn ground rent stated in the listing counts as disclosed.
- Base for the leasehold figures. Listings whose stated tenure was leasehold, share of freehold, shared ownership or commonhold (827 of 893). Flats with no stated tenure are counted only in the tenure statistic, which makes the headline figures conservative.
- What we retained. Aggregate counts only. No listing text, images, addresses or agent identities were stored beyond the postcode district, and none are published. The CSV above is the full granularity we keep.
- Limitations. One portal, five cities, one sampling day. Newest listings may differ from the full stock. Disclosure parsing is automated and we publish the rules we used; a figure phrased in a way our parser cannot read would count as not disclosed, which is the same standard an automated buyer-side tool, or a buyer skimming, would experience.
Questions, the per-city splits, or a custom cut for a story. Email hello@flatscope.co.uk. Data is CC BY 4.0, credit Flatscope with a link to this page.
Checking a flat where the listing stays quiet
Flatscope is the tool we built from the buyer's side of this problem. Paste a Rightmove link and it reads the public record. Sold prices, the lease position, EPC and building-safety signals, with anything the listing omits flagged honestly as not stated rather than guessed. Three full reports a month are free, no card.
Or read about how the research pipeline works and how it compares to doing it by hand.