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...
One reason general liability insurance is so expensive is that landlords can be sued for money damages if an individual gets injured on their property. While there are lots of legal theories trial lawyers can rely on, the vast majority of personal injury cases against landlords involve one or...
New York State has become something of a national laboratory of commercial leasing litigation testing the rights of retail and restaurant tenants that couldn’t meet their lease rental obligations due to COVID-19 shutdowns. A brand-new case brought by upscale retailer Hugo Boss is...
Waiving consent rights doesn’t necessarily require ceding all control.
Leasing to franchise businesses can ensure a stream of large, financially stable, and nationally recognized tenants. But it also poses unique leasing challenges. To leverage the full strength of...
Guaranty agreements may cap how much the guarantor has to pay if the tenant defaults. For example, the agreement may say that $100,000 is the most the landlord can collect from the guarantor. If you include dollar caps in your own lease guaranties, just be sure that they exclude attorney’s...
Throughout the course of this pandemic, landlords have found all kinds of creative ways to support COVID-19-strapped tenants who can’t pay rent. When the history is written, it is likely to show that working together to find mutually workable solutions was, in fact, the most effective...
Granting rent concessions and abatements (which we’ll refer to collectively as “abatements”) has become standard operating procedure in these troubled times. But before you engage in the practice, check your lease for a loophole that can limit how much of a rent increase you...
Many, if not most, retail tenants hesitate to sign leases containing continuous operation clauses. Of course, this dogged determination to maintain the right to go dark and not be forced to operate no matter how bad business becomes is nothing new. But there can be no doubt that the COVID-19...
In addition to their express terms, leases are governed by so-called common law rules that apply regardless of what the agreement actually says. One of these rules is a normally obscure and arcane doctrine known as “frustration of purpose,” which applies when performing lease duties...
Death and taxes aren’t the only certainties in life. So are rises in the costs of operating commercial property. That’s why landlords generally require tenants to pay their share of operating expenses. And while most tenants are willing to go along with this arrangement...
They say that no good deed goes unpunished. And if you’ve cut tenants a break on their rent during the COVID-19 crisis, you may have learned the truth of this maxim the hard way. This is especially so if the tenant later declared for bankruptcy. Thanks to the so-called rule of preference,...
