The cost of buying your freehold or extending your lease has increased following the recent Sportelli Judgment, says David Lawrenson.

A recent judgment in court means that the leaseholders of most flats are now going to have to pay to buy their freehold or extend their lease.

It's all to do with how the price you pay is calculated.

When you buy the freehold of a property, what you are effectively doing is paying now - in today's money - for an asset that the freeholder would have got back in the future, when the lease expired.

Most leases were originally granted for periods of ninety nine or one hundred and twenty five years and the typical lease in the UK today has between 40 and 90 years left to run.