James Schaife's story — a London flat languishing unsold for four years — is not an isolated tale of bad luck but a symptom of a market fracture that has been building since 2016. While houses across much of the UK continue to find buyers within weeks, flats, particularly leasehold flats in London and the South East, have become the property market's problem child. Estate agents report that flats in the capital are now taking, on average, twice as long to sell as houses, with some blocks affected by cladding remediation or high service charges sitting on the market for years rather than months. For an asset class that once formed the bedrock of first-time buyer purchases and buy-to-let portfolios alike, this is a structural shift with consequences reaching far beyond one couple's stalled sale.