On the original question - pretty much all flats in England and Wales are leasehold. For myself, as a house in my preferred area was way out of reach price wise, I knew I was only looking at leasehold properties. I ended up doing a lot of research, ask me about short leases, that's a fun kettle of fish... >:( there isn't really another way of doing flats here that's taken off.
The question is who owns the lease and what do they do with it. The flat I've ended up with is, obviously, a leasehold. But each of the six flats (it's a conversion of a period property) owns a one sixth share of the freehold. So no ground rent is being charged, and leases are long and renewed for free purely as a formality.
The service charge is £100/month which is kind of steep. That's a separate but related issue to the type of ownership and comes with the territory of a building that is shared between multiple separate households. Annoyingly for me, the service charge has historically been set at £60/month, and the residents resisted raising it despite pleas from the management company until just before I moved in. At £60/month they were basically treading water, only getting enough in to cover expenses (buildings insurance, taking care of communal areas and garden, some damp proofing works, etc etc) but not enough to build up a sinking fund. For a building of this age that's not really appropriate, as it's inevitable things will come up - e.g. it's clear that in the next five years or so some work will need to be done on the roof, and that's likely to be in £10k+ territory which they currently don't have in the coffers.
Ultimately while the £100/month is annoying, I don't think I'd be spending much less if I was more directly responsible for maintaining a similar sort of property. Of course if it was a shiny new build that would be a different matter. And if we don't think the management company are doing a good job we're the ones in a position to replace them (hopefully not though, they seem pretty good from the accounts etc I've seen).
So basically, a leasehold is a lot less of a big deal if you're also the freeholder :) that's very common in small conversions (house/corner shop/church building/etc turned into a small number of flats), and less so in purpose built developments though. And every lease will be different so obviously actually reading them is a must! Many leases are totally reasonable even without a share of freehold arrangement. Others have weird stipulations or unexpected financial impacts.
Leasehold houses are more ridiculous, I really can't see a single excuse to do that.