Delays are apt to occur any time you perform pre-move-in construction work for a new tenant. Such delays may result in your not being able to complete the work by the date the tenant is required to begin paying rent under the lease. To protect tenants in the event of such a contingency, leases...
Perhaps the only positive aspect of the COVID-19 shutdowns, at least from a commercial leasing perspective, is how it made landlords aware of just how dependent on their tenants they are. The real winners of the pandemic were the landlords that found a way to work together with tenants to adjust...
“Is my landlord going to drag its feet if I try to assign or sublet the lease?” That’s a question that has kept many a tenant lying awake in bed at night. Rather than risk a delay that might ultimately cost them the assignment or sublease, these tenants may insist on requiring...
Jump-start your leases to prepare for tenant demand and legal compliance.
With electric vehicle (EV) purchases on the rise, a new fixture has begun to appear in the parking lots of office buildings, shopping centers, medical facilities, and other commercial properties...
Boilerplate language requiring tenants to get your consent to assign the lease may not be enough to guarantee your right to consent to future assignments. Thus, in saying yes to a lease assignment, you may be inadvertently consenting to all of the subsequent assignments that the assignee chooses...
Percentage rent tenants are typically required to give landlords the monthly sales reports they use to calculate their percentage rent. All too often, though, the tenant provides only its gross sales figure—the amount on which percentage rent is calculated under the lease agreement. It...
Do you grant your tenants the option to purchase the leased premises? If you’re using a standard lease form to provide such an option, you might also be inadvertently giving the tenant an unexpected windfall: one or more months of free rent in the months after it exercises the option. Here...
One of the few positives to emerge from the pandemic for commercial leasing was how it got landlords and tenants to set aside historical mistrust and work together for their mutual welfare and survival. While the pressing issue at the height of the COVID-19 crisis was restructuring rent...
It’s a common scenario that’s likely to arise any time a landlord hires outside contractors to carry out substantial improvements on a tenant’s premises: The tenant requests that the landlord “transfer” any construction warranties that the tradespeople may have...
Working from home and other post-COVID business realities have made many office tenants reluctant to sign a long-term lease. One way to overcome this is by offering tenants the option to terminate the lease early if the rent becomes unaffordable or the space becomes unnecessary. But while...
It costs a lot of money to maintain a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) system. There’s also a lot at stake. Keeping the HVAC system humming is crucial to maintaining comfort, ensuring air quality, and, in some cases, preserving tenants’ stored inventory. Accordingly...
When negotiating a percentage rent lease, don’t be surprised if a retail tenant demands that you exclude bad debts from the formula for calculating gross sales. This is hardly an unreasonable demand. After all, why should the tenant have to pay percentage rent on customer receivables that...
