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In these tough times, landlords need to find ways to turn lemons into lemonade. One example is considering whether the lemon of the tenant who’s paying below-market rent might yield sweet lemonade in the form of a reduction in your property tax assessment. This recipe has worked for many property owners, and it might just work for you.
A commercial lease to an auto shop tenant includes three key clauses:
1. Tenant’s duty to maintain insurance. Section 19 of the lease requires the tenant to maintain fire, business, and liability insurance on the property and name the landlord as an additional insured. It also provides that “tenant shall provide Landlord with a copy of all policies of insurance within 30 days of Landlord's request of same.”
When negotiating the terms of a work letter with a tenant, don’t just agree to do a particular item of work “to code,” without listing any specifics or limitations. When not properly defined or limited, the phrase “to code” can be the source of confusion, miscommunication, and litigation.
Certified public accountants (CPAs) don’t work for free. And if you know math, you may not need one to calculate your own real estate tax, cost-of-living increases, operating expenses, and other lease costs you pass along to tenants. However, the money you save on CPA fees by doing your own cost calculations may be more than washed out by the liability costs you incur if your lease requires a CPA to prepare those figures.
This. It’s such a simple, little word, one that we all use countless times per day. But used the wrong way in a commercial lease, “this” can bite a landlord in the backside. If you don’t believe it, ask the Arizona landlord that lost a juicy rent increase because of “this.”
The pandemic has illustrated the need for landlords and tenants to be flexible and work together to find solutions to leases that have become disadvantageous. One approach is to enter into a buy-out agreement allowing the tenant to end the lease early in exchange for an agreed-to sum of money.
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 for failing to deliver the space on time. All of this makes the holdover rent rate a crucial issue in typical lease negotiations. If a tenant is in a strong bargaining position, yo...
Before notifying a tenant that it’s in default, be sure to check the lease to see if it includes any special requirements. If so, follow those requirements to the letter, or you could end up losing your eviction and other remedy rights.
Don’t ease up on your efforts to re-rent space that a tenant has vacated early—even if the tenant is doing its own search for somebody to take over its rent obligations. While spending your own time and money might seem like a needless reduplication of effort, sitting back and counting on the tenant to line up a replacement can prove even more costly.
Commercial property owners should ensure that their leases describe all tenant payments and charges as either “rent” or “additional rent.” While it might seem like a legal technicality, using these terms ensures you access to fast-track eviction if the tenant later defaults on its obligation to pay operating expenses, taxes, trash removal, parking fees, and other leasing costs.
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