Owner Wins
February 23, 2023
What Happened: A restaurant exercised its renewal option but furnished notice only after the option period had expired. A month later, the landlord sold the property and notified the new owner that the restaurant’s tenancy was now month to month. The tenant sent the next month’s rent...
Owner Wins
February 23, 2023
What Happened: A landlord got agita after reading in the local newspaper that its tenant, the local Golden Corral restaurant, had closed down. Upon finding the property apparently abandoned and in very dirty condition, it changed the locks. It then sent the tenant a notice to cure the breach—...
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...
