If you signed a lease with an operating cotenancy clause, you may feel that you’re under pressure to keep the status quo at your center or pay the price by allowing the tenant with a cotenancy right to pay reduced rent or take advantage of other concessions if one or more other tenants...
Many office building and shopping center owners focus on the terms of the lease itself, forgetting that pre-lease agreements leading up to the start of the tenant’s term can make or break the deal from the start. But what about a scenario where the lease term never actually starts? If a...
Commercial tenants typically want the right to “go dark”—that is, stop operating while continuing to pay rent—if their businesses aren’t generating enough revenue. “Going dark” can save tenants the cost of stocking and staffing the space they rent. But...
When you lease space to a tenant, it’s impossible to predict whether you’ll experience the unpleasant repercussions of accidents, injuries, or criminal acts that can be attributed to the tenant. These events can be costly, but as with most other risks involved in leasing space, you...
If you’re working with a prospective lender, buyer, or investor for your office building or shopping center, the last thing you want is a surprise tenant issue that can hold up or even kill the deal. Any party preparing to spend money will want to know that it won’t be blindsided...
A new trend is occurring whereby landlords are being held liable for the illegal activities of their tenants—regardless of the landlord’s involvement in those illicit activities. This trend is extremely disconcerting and requires landlords to...
Attorney’s fees are a point of contention in many owner-tenant disputes. Typically, one party argues that the other party should pay for its own legal fees and ...
If an environmentally “risky” tenant, such as a dry cleaning business, gas station, or auto service center—which all use chemicals that could contaminate your property—will be lucrative enough to make taking the risk of potential damage worth it, it’s crucial that...
Technological advances that provide security and convenience for users are being made in leaps and bounds, and even the traditional commercial real estate industry is benefitting—most recently, from digital signature software. Traditional methods of executing leases and related documents...
One thing you do not like to hear when negotiating a commercial lease agreement is that the tenant must have possession of the space by some important date, known as the “drop-dead date.” Why? Because the tenant usually wants the landlord to...
One of the key economic questions any commercial lease must address is whether the tenant is responsible for paying real estate taxes on the property and, if so, how much. More often than not, the tenant does have tax liabilities, but because of the money...
