The letting agency’s research found that more than a third of flats in England and Wales have service charges that exceed 1% of the property’s value, meaning some lenders would not be willing to provide a mortgage.

Hamptons’ figures show that leaseholders of flats in England and Wales paid an average service charge of £2,405 per year in 2025, up by  4.6% from 2024.

Its analysis reveals that average service charges have risen by 56% over the past decade outstripping consumer prices index (CPI) inflation of 40% over the same period. 

Hamptons also found that flats with a service charge of 1% of their value or under were 50% more likely to sell last year than those with charges of 2% or more.

Speaking in front of the Housing Committee yesterday, Free Leaseholders founder Harry Scoffin quoted the research finding that 37% of flats have charges over 1%.

He said: “What that means is those flats are unmortgageable. 

“They are unsellable.”

Scoffin warned that owners of existing leasehold flats are facing a “crisis” and at risk of being left behind by reforms to boost the uptake of commonhold as a tenure for new properties.

He said: “So that’s our concern, that you’re going to be trapped in leasehold and actually it’s commonhold [for the owners of new properties], but they are going to basically keep us [existing leaseholders] trapped.”

He urged the government to go much further to ensure that existing leaseholders could convert to commonhold or take over the freehold of their homes.

Speaking in front of the committee in an earlier session, Leasehold Knowledge Partnership lawyer and campaigner Liam Spender raised concerns that freeholders would get around the ground rent cap by pushing up service charges to recoup their profits.

He said: “My view is, for as long as it’s possible to create leasehold flats, it is possible to put head leases above them with things that are described as ‘service charges’, which look like ground rents.

“This is very common in more than complicated mixed-use sites, where you have got retail, shared ownership housing, there is very often an estate service charge that is not not linked to the cost of providing services, but is linked to RPI and that looks a lot like a ground rent.

“The longer you allow leasehold flats to be created, the greater the risk is of more of those sorts of estate service charges being created. 

“So I think we should move quickly to stop this.”

Two former housing secretaries, Labour MP Angela Rayner and Conservative peer Lord Gove, also called on the government to act swiftly to bring an end to leasehold and to stand up to legal threats from freeholders.