LEASES
Why we started The Lease Translator and what we’re trying to do with it The Document YOU’LL LIVE WITH LONGEST
Jenna Thompson , Founder, The Lease Translator
Lisa Park , Founder, The Lease Translator
Most first time buyers read the brochure cover to cover, the mortgage offer down to the monthly figure, and the survey at least as far as the summary. Most buyers don’t read the lease.Yet a home is the most expensive thing most people will ever buy, and the document that governs it is treated as an afterthought. Some leases run for 999 years. That’s a long time to be liable. We started The Lease Translator because we kept answering those questions too late. Between us we’ve spent our working lives in residential leasehold, and the questions almost always arrived after completion, from proud new owners with keys in hand, asking what their lease meant now it was theirs. The answers were in the document. It just hadn’t been read in a way anyone could use. That’s what we do.We read the whole lease and set out what it says in plain English, with the clause reference beside every point so anything can be checked. We work from the lease at whatever stage it reaches the buyer: sometimes before an offer, where a seller or sales team can share a copy early, or while the solicitor’s enquiries are still open before exchange. No shortcuts, just less friction. Every clause is checked word for word against the lease itself, so nothing in the report drifts from what the document actually says. And the translation into simple English comes from operational experience. We both still work in residential leasehold management, inside service charge accounts and the questions residents ask every day. Where the wording is unclear, our report says so rather than guess. For a buyer, it means the surprises arrive before exchange instead of after completion: • The garden described as private at the viewing, which the lease records as shared. • The ground floor owner contributing
• A tracker for the service charge reforms due to commence during 2027. • The Leasehold Surgery: 20 free minutes every Friday, for leaseholders and professionals alike. A survey tells you about the condition of a home today.The lease tells you what you’ll pay, and what you will be responsible for, for as long as you own it. We’d have loved this when we were starting out; it would have saved us a lot of headaches. Leasehold isn’t complicated once it’s explained in simple terms that are easy to understand. Sometimes it just needs someone to connect the dots.
• The buyer with a 25% share who assumed the landlord covered 75% of the repairs. Many leases hand them to the owner in full from day one. None of that is unusual. In the English Housing Survey for 2024-25, 61% of shared owners said their service charge was too high, against 46% of other leaseholders. It matters on the other side of the desk too. Sales teams, aftercare and conveyancers work from the same lease, often at speed and without a leasehold background. A single report helps everyone work from the same understanding of what the lease says. It isn’t legal advice, and that’s deliberate. We’re not a law firm, we give no opinion on price or condition, and we’ll never say buy or walk away. The report explains; the reader decides. We want this to reach everyone who deals with leasehold, and have launched free tools and services: • A benchmark tool that sets a service charge against The Property Institute’s 2026 index.
Sample reports, free tools and the Friday Leasehold Surgery are all at theleasetranslator.co.uk
Jenna Thompson and Lisa Park are the founders of The Lease Translator , providing clear, factual explanations of residential leasehold documents.
to a lift they will never use, and the household with no children paying towards the playground.
90 First Time Buyer October/November 2026
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