If you take on leasehold stock, there are six things worth having before a buyer exists. Most agencies collect all of them. They collect them in week ten.
Lease length, and any deed of variation sitting behind it.
Service charge accounts for the last three years.
Ground rent, and the review pattern rather than just today's figure.
Major works history, and any Section 20 consultation running or expected.
Who the managing agent is, and how long their last pack took.
Building safety documentation where the block needs it.
None of that requires a buyer. All of it existed on the day the property was listed.
It matters because flats consistently take about a month longer than houses to get from sale agreed to the Land Registry, and have done in every quarter I have looked at. That gap isn't survey or lending. It is the lease, the freeholder, the managing agent and the service charge history, which is to say it is those six items arriving late.
So the process is arranged to discover its own biggest risks last, which is the opposite of how anyone would design it.
The objection I hear is that gathering this upfront costs time on instructions that might not sell. True, and it is the wrong comparison. The alternative isn't saving the time. It is spending it anyway, in week ten, on a chain that is already assembled and now has to wait.
The items that come back badly don't kill the instruction. They change the price, the timeline you promise, and who you market it to. Those are week one decisions wearing a week ten disguise.
A transaction very rarely fails because somebody read the documents too early.
Co-founder of Propalt and a property investor and developer for 20 years
