Certified public accountants (CPAs) don’t work for free. And if you know math, you may not need one to calculate your own real estate tax, cost-of-living increases, operating expenses, and other lease costs you pass along to tenants. However, the money you save on CPA fees by doing your...
Of course, you want to ensure that all tenants pay full rent on time every month. But you’re not just a landlord but also a businessperson who understands that half a loaf is often better than no loaf at all, especially when times are tough. Why not just cut a tenant who’s struggling...
Litigation is expensive, but it’s often unavoidable. Consequently, most landlords seek to ensure they can recover their legal costs if they have to take the tenant to court to enforce the lease.
Some types of percentage rent tenants, such as building supply and paint stores, are apt to insist on carving out “wholesale sales” since they make less profit on those sales. You may have little choice but to accept this demand, especially when the tenant is a retail giant like Home...
Here’s a suggestion for anyone who uses a standard boilerplate lease: Look through the document and see if it includes a statement like this. If it does, it’s most likely to be toward the end of the lease.
Listing the name of the person or entity that guarantees a tenant’s lease performance in the text of the guaranty seems like a perfectly normal and sensible thing to do. But it can have unforeseen and unfavorable legal consequences. The problem is that adding, subtracting, and changing...
Whether out of neglect or clerical error, you may forget to invoice a tenant for a tax escalation or other charge it owes you. Or, if the tenant is struggling, you might decide to keep the bill in your back pocket and wait for its finances to improve. In either case, you’re taking a risk....
Common misconception: Leasing to a foreign business is no different from leasing to a U.S. business. Truth: Leasing to a non-U.S. business raises special legal considerations. The problem is that standard boilerplate leases aren’t designed for—and thus frequently fail...
Leases are long, complicated documents that only attorneys read word for word. Accordingly, landlords and other lease drafters may use different techniques to draw attention to part of the lease that they think are really important. One example is by having the tenant initial pages containing...
When you renew a lease that includes a guaranty from the tenant’s business principal or another third party, you might assume that the guaranty will automatically continue into the renewal term. But if you don’t get the guarantor to sign off on the renewal lease, you may be unable to...
It’s hard to determine today how much rent to charge a tenant for a lease renewal (or extension) that won’t happen until years later. It may be tempting to skirt this problem by providing for the renewal at an unspecified rent “to be negotiated” or “agreed to...
The rule of “anticipatory breach” gives you the right to take immediate legal action against tenants that no longer intend to fulfill their remaining obligations under the lease. The catch: The tenant must make it crystal clear, whether by words or by actions, of its intent...
