Buy the freehold or just renew lease?

if buying the freehold is only 3-4k more then of course buy the freehold
hope this helps

Who owns the freehold now?

Is the freeholder willing to sell? If yes

1. What would the other leaseholder like to do?
2. Is the other leaseholder’s lease also around 65 years to run?
3. Do you have the money between you to purchase the freehold?
4. If the other leaseholder doesn’t want to purchase 50% of the freehold then are you happy to go it alone?
It will be for you to arrange buildings insurance, building up keep etc etc and re-charge costs between both leaseholders (yes you will own the freehold 100% but each leaseholder pays 50% of the freeholders costs/expenses so you need to invoice yourself as a leaseholder to keep your books straight for if and when you come to sell your flat with or without the benefit of the freehold)
5. Approach the freeholder and ask how much would they want to sell the freehold to you solely or to both leaseholders

Leaseholders have right of first refusal if the freeholder is willing to sell.

Is the freeholder willing to sell? If no, then no option but to extend your lease. The “premium” payable to the freeholder is a calculation based on ground rent and how many years to run and extending to xyz years. It’s online somewhere.

Buy the freehold, as your lease is below 80 years there are few, if any, rules about what they can charge you.

Buying the freehold eradicates a whole stack of potential issues around management charges and costs and the price can be negotiated effectively by a counter appraisal of value from your own surveyor.

The surveyors, theirs and yours, basically have the bun fight and agree a value. We managed to get an opening valuation from the freeholders reduced by 33% once our surveyor got to work.