Service charges on flats in England and Wales have broken through £200 a month for the first time and piling fresh pressure on leaseholders and complicating sales.
Analysis by Hamptons shows the average leaseholder paid £2,405 a year – or £200.42 a month – in 2025, up 4.6% on 2024.
Over five years, charges have jumped 32.6%, and over the last decade they have surged 55.6%, outstripping CPI inflation over both periods.
The data also highlights a growing mortgage and saleability issue. Last year, 37% of flats had a service charge exceeding 1% of their value, up from 28% a decade ago. Some lenders are increasingly reluctant to lend above this threshold.
RISING COSTS
Flats with service charges at or below 1% of their value were 50% more likely to sell than those where charges equated to 2% or more.
Meanwhile, just 14% of flats now come with a service charge under £100 per month – down from 34% five years ago.
In London, average service charges have reached £2,801 a year (£233 a month), up 6.4% year-on-year and 64.5% over the last decade.
BIGGER BILLS INEVITABLE
David Fell (main picture, inset), lead analyst at Hamptons, said: “Many leaseholders have seen the economic efficiencies of sharing a single roof with their neighbours steadily eroded by rising running costs.
“Traditionally, the cost of running a flat has been below what owners of houses spend over the long term. However, in recent years, large increases in management and compliance costs that aren’t paid by homeowners have upset the equilibrium.
“While the government is looking to cap ground rents, it is service charges which are usually the single largest cost for leaseholders by some margin.
“But the unplanned nature of building maintenance means that they can’t be capped… where there aren’t sufficient sinking funds in place, it’s inevitable that bigger service charge bills will be landing on the doormats and inboxes of leaseholders.”
