Feature
January 27, 2023
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 across the country: the...
Traps to Avoid
January 27, 2023
A signed letter of intent (LOI) is often the preliminary step to a commercial lease. The LOI typically requires the sides to keep the deal confidential while outlining the crucial terms of the lease they both ultimately intend to sign. However, while it may feel like a commitment, the LOI is less...
Plugging Loopholes
January 27, 2023
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 to...
Owner Loses
January 27, 2023
What Happened: Winter Storm Uri devastated a commercial building six weeks before the lease was due to expire. The lease required the tenant to carry commercial general liability insurance on the property, name the landlord as an additional insured, and remit the insurance proceeds to the landlord...
Owner Loses
January 27, 2023
What Happened: After the lease ended, a shopping center tenant hired a self-employed independent contractor to remove an exterior sign from the space. While performing the work, the contractor fell through a roof opening and suffered serious injuries. He sued the landlord, rather than the tenant,...
Owner Loses
January 27, 2023
Feature
December 22, 2022
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 omits...
Plugging Loopholes
December 22, 2022
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...
Traps to Avoid
December 22, 2022
Finding a financially stable tenant that you know won’t go out of business and will have the financial resources to pay its rent every month no matter how long the lease lasts is every commercial landlord’s dream, especially in these tough economic times. That’s why it might be...
Owner Loses
December 22, 2022
What Happened: There was no dispute that a Chicago hair lice removal salon that stopped paying its nearly $5,000 monthly rent was in default under the lease. The issue was whether the landlord could enforce the lease clause granting it 27 months of future rent as liquidated damages. The lower court...
