Property Law Unpacked – What can you do if your freeholder is delaying your property sale?

You have accepted an offer, your buyer is ready and the move is starting to feel real. Then the sale stalls, not because of anything you or your buyer have done, but because you are both waiting on information that only the freeholder or managing agent can provide. Your solicitor asks, chases, and gets little back beyond an acknowledgement, if that.

It is a frustrating feeling. Weeks of silence can unsettle a buyer, push a mortgage offer towards its expiry and hold up everyone else in the chain. The hardest part is that the delay sits with someone who has no direct stake in your sale.

The reassuring news is that you are rarely as powerless as it feels. There are practical steps that reduce the risk before it bites, and there are legal duties that can be enforced when someone is genuinely not doing their job. The starting point is simple: work out what is missing, who is actually responsible for it, and whether there is an obligation your solicitor can hold them to.

Why your buyer needs management information

When someone buys a leasehold flat, they step into your lease and everything that comes with it. Their solicitor has to understand the service charges, the buildings insurance, any planned major works, and any disputes or arrears attached to the property, along with the management set-up and any consents or notices needed when the flat changes hands.

Most of this is gathered in a leasehold management or sales information pack, usually requested on the standard Leasehold Property Enquiries form, known as the LPE1. You may hold some of it already, but a large part can only come from the landlord, management company or managing agent. If their reply is late or incomplete, your buyer's solicitor is left unable to answer questions that a lender and a cautious buyer will insist on.

In short: the pack is not box-ticking. It is the information your sale cannot complete without, which is exactly why a slow response does so much damage.

Where a share of freehold fits in

A share of freehold can look like a shortcut, but it does not change what your buyer needs. Picture a converted house of four flats: each owner holds a long lease of their own flat and also owns a share, or a membership interest, in the company that owns the building's freehold. The individual leases stay in place and still govern repairs, insurance and service charges.

On a sale, you may need to transfer both your lease and your share or membership in the freehold company. The arrangements differ where owners hold the freehold jointly in their own names. Either way, your buyer still needs full information about the building. Owning a share of the freehold does not turn the transaction into the sale of an ordinary freehold house.

Get ahead of it before the sale turns urgent

If the freeholder or agent has been hard to reach before, say so the moment you decide to sell. Pull together your recent service charge statements, insurance documents, correspondence about major works and any other management papers you hold. That lets your solicitor see quickly what has to come from a third party and request it early, leaving room to deal with gaps and follow-up questions before they threaten a deadline.

Keep a simple record as you go: what was requested, when, and what is still outstanding. A clear list of unanswered enquiries does two things. It pinpoints the real obstacle to your sale, and it helps your solicitor judge the moment when routine chasing needs to become a formal demand.

The duties that can actually be enforced

It helps to know where the law gives you real leverage and where it does not. Start with the levers that have teeth.

• Consent to sell. If your lease requires the landlord's consent to assign, meaning to transfer the lease to your buyer, and says that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld, a written application can trigger duties under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1988. Those can include deciding within a reasonable time and giving written notice of the decision, with reasons for any refusal or conditions imposed. A landlord sitting on a consent application stands on much weaker ground than one who is simply slow with a pack.
• Information you are entitled to. Existing legislation already gives leaseholders rights to certain service charge and insurance information. These rights carry their own requirements and timescales, and they do not force a landlord to answer every LPE1 question, but they can prise loose specific documents your buyer needs.
• Fees. Some charges for supplying information or documents can be challenged as administration charges, depending on what they are and the legal basis for them.

But where is the limit? As of today there is no general statutory deadline forcing every landlord or agent to return the usual sales pack within a set number of days. The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 is designed to create exactly that framework, with prescribed requests, response periods and fee controls, but it is not yet in force: it still needs commencement and detailed regulations. The Government's June 2026 roadmap places consultation on these sales information measures in 2027 to 2028.

So a simply unanswered pack request does not, on its own, hand you an instant statutory claim. The practical route is the one your solicitor will take: look past the silence to find the specific duty, the consent application, the information right, or the lease clause, that the responsible party is actually breaching.

Moving from chasing to enforcing

Where a clear obligation is being ignored, a formal legal letter is often the right next step. A good one names the responsible party, sets out the duty, states exactly what is missing and gives a fair deadline. Simply getting a focused, correctly aimed demand in front of the right person can break a logjam without anyone going near a court.

If it does not, the remedy depends on the breach. A civil court claim might seek an order requiring action, a declaration of the parties' rights, or damages. Tribunals handle defined matters such as service and administration charge disputes, but they have no general power to make a freeholder complete a sales pack. And a collapsed sale does not automatically become a compensation claim: you need a recognised legal basis, evidence of a breach, and proof that the breach caused a loss you can actually recover.

Timing and cost decide a lot here. While a sale is live, the real goal is usually the information, consent or action that keeps it moving, not a courtroom victory that arrives too late. Your solicitor should weigh whether litigation can realistically deliver in time and whether the cost is proportionate. The earlier you take advice, the more of these choices are still open to you.

How can we help?

At Laurus, our conveyancing lawyers can quickly diagnose what is holding up a leasehold sale, and work alongside our Property Litigation team where a duty needs enforcing.

Wherever possible we aim to get your sale moving through a focused, well-aimed request rather than proceedings, keeping litigation in reserve for when it is genuinely the fastest route to the result you need.

If you are about to sell and expect difficulty, or your sale is already stuck, talk to our Property team early. We can review the documents and advise on the most practical way forward. You can reach the team on 020 3145 6300 or email enquiries@lauruslaw.co.uk