SerpApi.Org
Nieves Guijarro has not had a single viewing on her flat since putting it up for sale over two months ago – even after dropping the price.
The 35-year-old from Hertfordshire bought her two-bed flat in 2019 for £170,000 and put the property up for sale in April this year for £230,000.
However, Nieves had to drop the price a month later after not getting a single viewing – now she is trying to sell the leasehold property for £219,000.
Nieves wants to leave the UK to be with her partner but can’t until she sells, as she won’t be able to afford moving away and still paying the mortgage on her place.
She feels frustrated because she put a lot of money into buying the flat at – and now feels it’s a millstone round her neck.
She is planning to go to auction with her flat – even if it means selling at a loss.
“I used my life savings that I worked incredibly hard to be able to put a deposit down on a flat on my own,” she says.
“My flat will be hemorrhaging my savings. I am very careful with money and have a savings buffer which I always knew I would need in this process of moving, but now it feels like this will be a long-term leach on my finances,” she added.
Nieves lives in a block of eight flats and said in previous years other residents have had no trouble selling.
Her flat has an extended lease, and in 2022, her apartment building was granted Right To Manage – which gives leaseholders control over services.
A leasehold deal is a type of ownership in which someone owns the property for a fixed period under a legal agreement with the freeholder.
Owners of this type of home usually pay a service charge intended to cover the maintenance, repairs and management of the building’s or estate’s communal areas.
Nieves said: “This means that unlike many leaseholds, my flat has both a peppercorn (zero) ground rent and controlled low service charges that are not extortionate. We now have a healthy reserve fund and the communal areas in good condition, and we are fire safety compliant.”
She believes she can’t sell because of rising mortgage rates after the conflict in Iran broke out, as well as the negative connotations associated with leasehold flats.
Millions of leaseholders across England and Wales will have their ground rents capped at £250 a year from 2028, Sir Keir Starmer announced in January.
Other key measures include a ban on the sale of new leasehold homes and a gradual transition to a “commonhold system”, which means there will be no freehold landlords.
There are no plans to cap service charges; however, some campaigners are unhappy with this.
Hamptons research earlier this year found flat leaseholders in England and Wales paid an average service charge of £2,405 or £200.42 a month in 2025, up 4.6 per cent from 2024.
Average service charge rose 32.6 per cent over the last five years, outstripping inflation.
Mortgage rates rose after the start of the Iran war in February and although they have since dropped back a little, they have begun to rise again after a ceasefire between the US and Iran ended.
Nieves is hoping they begin to fall again soon.
She said: “My family keep telling me to cut my losses and sell at a loss. I have worked so hard to pay for it, to pay for improvements in the flat and in the block, so much invested, and it really is a nice flat; it feels really toxic to sell it so below what it is worth.”
