FTB here, but don’t buy leasehold flats

Seen a lot of FTB posts on here asking about flats vs houses. I’m a FTB in the process of buying a 3 bed ready to move in house for around mid £500k in zone 5, and a friend of mine recently bought a share of freehold turnkey 2 bed flat in SW London for £400k, no ground rent or service charge.

Just like many FTB, we looked at a lot of options. Because of “low budget”, we thought about leasehold flats as well as they are much cheaper. But we gotta think about it long term. SC may be £3k pa now but in 10 years, it will be £5k+ most likely, not to mention the resell value. My friends who bought leasehold flats all regretted it. Sometimes the cheapest is the most expensive in the end. You’d rather spend more on Capex than spend a lot more on Opex as it will eat up at your savings.

I understand if you can’t afford it, you just can’t. But you’d rather go slightly further away or compromise a bit of space or the interior for something that holds value long term. Buying a house is one of the biggest if not the biggest investment in your life. So take a step back and do some research before committing to something long term.

I’ve seen it time and time again, my friends with leasehold flats struggle to sell, or have to slash the price by 30% to just get viewings.