Ownership
Tenure (freehold and leasehold)
How a property is held: freehold outright, or leasehold for a fixed term under a lease from the freeholder; recorded on every registered sale and every title.
Also called: freehold, leasehold, lease term, commonhold.
Definition
Tenure, as the data uses it
Freehold is ownership of the land and what stands on it, indefinitely. Leasehold is the right to occupy for a term, typically 99, 125 or 999 years from grant, under a lease that usually carries a ground rent and service charge; almost every flat in England and Wales is leasehold. A short remaining lease depresses value sharply, and below about 80 years the cost of extending it rises.
Price Paid Data records the tenure of every sale, so MarketCode's sale histories and comparables carry it, and a valuation reads a leasehold flat against leasehold comparables. What the platform does not hold is the remaining term on an arbitrary title, so a flat guided at a fraction of a freehold estimate at auction is a prompt to check the lease before anything else.
Tools
Tools that return it
Registered sales for a property
transactions_by_uprn()All HMLR Price Paid records joined to this UPRN, newest first.
Sold-price history
property_history()Sold-price history for a property, with per-sale detail.
Search land or units by criteria
sourcing_search()Find land parcels or residential units matching investment criteria — the sourcing tool. Give a `location` (place or area name) or a `bbox`.
See also
Related terms
- Title number: HM Land Registry's identifier for a registered title: a prefix for the office and a number, such as TGL123456; the key ownership records are held against.
- Price Paid Data: HM Land Registry's record of every registered residential sale in England and Wales since 1995: price, date, address, type, tenure and whether it was a standard market sale.
FAQ
Questions about tenure
What does Tenure mean?
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How a property is held: freehold outright, or leasehold for a fixed term under a lease from the freeholder; recorded on every registered sale and every title.
Which MarketCode tools return tenure?
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Registered sales for a property, Sold-price history, Search land or units by criteria. Each runs as an MCP tool in Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor and as a REST endpoint with an API key, at the same price.
Is leasehold the same thing?
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Yes. freehold, leasehold, lease term are other names for what this entry defines; MarketCode uses "Tenure" in its tool descriptions and responses.
See it on a real address.
Thirty minutes, your property or area, every figure sourced.