Freehold and leasehold are different markets. The £/m² data proves it

Tenure is the quiet variable in British house prices. Freehold means the property and its land, outright and forever; leasehold means a long lease on it, usually with ground rent and service charges attached and a clock, however slow, running in the background. Houses are mostly freehold, flats are almost always leasehold, and because the two trade on different per-square-metre curves, tenure is baked into every comparison whether you look at it or not. Better to look at it. The same is true of property type, which cuts across tenure and moves the rate at least as far.

How big is the gap, and which way does it point?

From the 12 months of sold prices to August 2026: in SW11, Battersea, 212 matched freehold sales ran at £10,000/m² against £8,770/m² across 520 leasehold ones, a premium for owning the ground under the Victorian terraces. In E16, Canning Town, it points the other way: £5,590/m² freehold against £5,940/m² leasehold, because the leasehold stock there is dominated by new riverside flats while the freehold stock is older terraced housing. Same country, same year, opposite gaps, and both make sense once you know what is actually being sold.

What does the split look like across the country?

Seven districts, chosen because each shows a different version of the same mechanism. Read the two rate columns against their own matched-sale counts: a tenure median over a few dozen sales is a softer figure than one over several hundred, and the table says which is which.

As a rule the freehold premium per square metre is largest where the leasehold stock is older flats, and smallest, or inverted, where it is new ones. Kensington and Battersea sit at one end, ground beneath period housing at a premium; Canning Town sits at the other, its leasehold column full of recent riverside stock trading above the older freehold terraces beside it. Leeds, Derby and Exeter are the ordinary middle. None of these gaps is a valuation of anything: each is two medians over two different sets of homes, which is exactly why the split is worth reading before comparing anything.

Why split the two before comparing anything?

A single district median blends both markets at whatever ratio they happened to trade this year, which creates a trap: a district can look like it moved when only its mix did. A year heavy in flat sales drags the blended £/m² down without a single home changing value. It is the same illusion that makes city centres look cheap per metre, their stock is flats, and flats carry service obligations a terraced house does not.

Every district page on this site lets you switch the headline statistics between all tenures, freehold only and leasehold only, each with its own matched-sale count. If you are buying a flat, judge it against the leasehold figures; a house, against freehold. Comparing a leasehold flat against a blended median flatters the flat.

How do you use the split when reading one listing?

Three steps, in order. Identify the tenure from the listing, and treat a listing that does not state it as unfinished: the difference is a different legal thing being bought, not a detail. Then judge the asking rate against the district’s median for that tenure, on the district’s own page, with the matched-sale count read alongside. Finally, if the two tenures’ medians sit far apart in that district, ask why before treating either as the market: the table above shows the answer is usually the stock, and a flat priced against a freehold-heavy blended median has been flattered by homes it does not resemble.

What can the split not see?

Tenure statistics count what sold, not the terms it sold on. Lease length, ground rent escalators, service charges and cladding remediation all price into individual leasehold sales without appearing as columns in the Land Registry record. A leasehold figure well under its district’s leasehold median often has one of those stories attached, which makes the data a prompt for questions, not a substitute for reading the lease. None of the figures here value any particular home.

Check the tenure split for your own area on its district page, or read the ten-minute asking-price check for the full method. Figures: HM Land Registry sold prices matched to EPC floor areas, 12 months to August 2026, rebuilt monthly.