For anchors and retail tenants with bargaining clout, the name of the game is drawing as many shoppers to the shopping center as possible. So, they’re apt to insist that the landlord refrain from renting to offices,...
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...
Getting tenants to leave their space when the lease ends can be a difficult and costly proposition. For one thing, you may have to initiate an eviction suit to get the tenant out. And if you’ve already re-rented the space, holdovers expose you to the risk of being sued by the new tenant...
Any time a property is sold there’s the possibility that the sale will trigger a tax assessment. And that creates the risk of a major real estate tax increase. Who pays for that increase when and if it occurs? Obviously, tenants won’t want to. They try to exclude tax increases...
It’s become abundantly clear that to overcome the economic dislocation caused by COVID-19, landlords must be able to work not only with their tenants but also their lenders. For one thing, you probably can’t offer tenants rent concessions and other relief without your lenders’...
The COVID-19 crisis has forced landlords and tenants around the country to rework their leases. And while the process will continue for months and even years, we’ve reached the point where we can step back and consider the big-picture leasing lessons from the tumultuous months of March,...
The months of April and May were a nightmare for rent collections. Things may not improve dramatically in June, July, or August. And with evictions temporarily barred in so many jurisdictions, landlords may feel they have no choice but to put up with tenant defaults and negotiate the best...
You’re negotiating a lease with a retail tenant that sells some goods on an installment basis in which customers make a series of payments over a period of time. How do you calculate these sales for purposes of calculating percentage rent? The tenant wants installment sales to count as...
“Alternative dispute resolution” (ADR) methods, including arbitration, are often used by commercial real estate owners to resolve differences with tenants out of court. Arbitration is a great solution for parties who are in disagreement about a single, clear-cut issue. Common, but...
Because visibility of its show windows and storefront signage is always a concern for retail tenants, a discussion about visibility will inevitably come up in negotiations for a lease for space at your center. Savvy tenants will demand that you agree in the lease not to block this visibility....
An hours cotenancy clause—which says that a tenant will be required to open during the center’s normal hours of operation only if a certain percentage of other tenants are also open—is a typical provision in retail leases. But like many other lease issues that seem ordinary at...
