e.surv found that 39.5 percent of London flats sold in 2025/26 after being held for five to 10 years went for less than their previous recorded purchase price – compared with 3.8 percent of houses held for the same period.
The figure is newly published in e.surv’s October house-price index and measures nominal resale losses, not a landlord’s full investment return. It applies to completed repeat sales in a specific holding-period band, but it puts a hard number on the exit risk facing some flat owners in the capital.
Landlords considering whether to sell, refinance or keep a leasehold flat need to separate rental income from the price they could achieve on exit. A sale below the prior recorded price does not prove every owner loses money after rent, but it can make a deposit for the next purchase, a refinance or a tenant-in-situ sale much harder to arrange.
London flat resale losses are far above house losses
Across Great Britain, 26.7 percent of flats held for five to 10 years resold below their prior recorded price, compared with 2.2 percent of houses. The South East recorded a 34.5 percent loss rate for flats and the East of England 31.4 percent. Scotland was the exception at 9.8 percent.
e.surv’s analysis uses HM Land Registry and Registers of Scotland repeat-sale data. It compares recorded purchase and resale prices, not a property’s current valuation, cash flow, stamp duty, mortgage costs, refurbishment spending or service charges. The results therefore show a nominal resale outcome, rather than a complete profit-and-loss account for a buy-to-let investment.
This follows Landlord Knowledge’s September report on proposed caps for leasehold permission fees. e.surv says building safety, tenure and service charges deserve closer attention when judging the weaker performance of flats, but its data does not identify one cause or prove that leasehold costs alone caused a loss in any sale.
Five-to-10-year owners face the sharpest London warning
London was the most severe result in the five-to-10-year group, but the report also found flats underperformed houses in every region. In the Midlands and North, the flat loss rate was closer to one in five; it was 14.0 percent in Wales and 16.3 percent in the North West.
Longer holding periods did not remove the issue altogether. For flats held 10 to 15 years, the Great Britain loss rate was 16.6 percent against 1.9 percent for houses. e.surv links the widening gap between flats and houses to the period from around 2017, while cautioning that smaller homes, urban concentration and changing buyer demand may also influence the pattern.
Landlords with a flat should also factor in the policy and management position of the block, rather than focusing only on headline house-price growth. Landlord Knowledge’s guide to the planned 2027 service-charge reforms for flat landlords sets out a separate regulatory change that could affect information and dispute processes. It does not alter the repeat-sale data in this report.
September price falls add to the disposal risk
The same index put the average Great Britain house price at £328,900 in September, up 1.5 percent year on year but down 0.2 percent over both the month and quarter. London was the only region with an annual fall, down 2.3 percent to £594,200. That broader backdrop makes a realistic flat valuation and a clear view of block costs important before a landlord commits to a sale timetable.
What this means for landlords
- If you own a leasehold flat: obtain recent comparable completed sales, not only listing prices, before setting an exit value or remortgage plan.
- If you are buying: test the investment against service charges, building-safety information and a conservative resale assumption as well as the projected yield.
- Watch for: the five-to-10-year holding period, where e.surv found the sharpest gap between flat and house resale outcomes.
- Bottom line: strong rent demand cannot by itself remove the resale risk in a flat with weak local price performance or uncertain block costs.
Editor’s view
Rental yield can hide an uncomfortable question until it is time to sell. The e.surv data does not make every London flat a bad investment, but it gives landlords a useful reason to stress-test the exit rather than assume years of ownership will guarantee a price gain.
Author: Editorial Team – UK landlord & buy-to-let news, policy, and finance
Published: 8 October 2026
Sources: e.surv Great Britain House Price Index, October 2026
Related reading: Government plans caps on leasehold permission fees
