Buy the lease. Until I bought mine a couple of years ago I was constantly being ripped off by the freeholders who were in bed with the people who did the maintenance and charged me a fortune in maintenance and insurance fees. Also, if you were late in paying they'd charge a percentage of interest per-day and you'd have to pay their lawyers too who they also colluded with. They were complete bastards. I'm in a small block of eight flats. We all bought our share of the lease a couple of years ago and got our own management company in to do the maintenance. It saves us at least ?1,000 a year each in fees and we haven't looked back.