A covenant to repair is not a covenant to modernise
The Upper Tribunal’s decision in Mountview Estates Plc v W8 Property Ltd [2026] UKUT 196 (LC) provides useful guidance on the condition in which a flat is to be valued when calculating the premium payable for a statutory lease extension.
The case concerned a flat which both parties’ valuers described as “uninhabitable”. The landlord argued that the valuation should nevertheless assume that the flat had been brought up to a clean, modern and readily marketable standard because the lease required the tenant to keep it in “good tenantable repair”.