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Generally, commercial property owners provide cleaning services to tenants. They typically hire and use a cleaning contractor that they choose. However, specialty tenants sometimes ask that they be allowed to hire their own, separate cleaning contractor. Tenants that have confidential information, such as banks and medical offices, and are concerned that a cleaning crew will have access to it, or tenants that have especially expensive merchandise, like jewelry stores, and are concerned about security, have been known to ask for this concession.

Owners often give tenants a “free rent” concession—that is, a portion of the term of a lease when no rent is required—to entice them to lease space. For example, in order to attract tenants to your new office building, you might offer a three-month rent-free period to those who sign a five-year lease. Free rent is a very common concession, especially during lease negotiations for space at a shopping center or office building that has a high vacancy rate.

Many important events and options for you and your commercial tenant are measured from your lease’s commencement date. The commencement date controls critical information, such as when the lease will expire, when rent starts, and when the tenant’s special options must be exercised.

An exclusive use clause is a highly valuable clause in a tenant’s lease because it will grant the tenant the sole right to sell certain products or operate a certain type of business in the shopping center where it rents space.

In a good economy, where commercial properties enjoy low vacancy rates, owners can more easily avoid giving termination rights to tenants. But in the past few years, more tenants have been negotiating to get them. Allowing a tenant to terminate its lease should be a last and final resort; generally, owners should reserve a termination right only for large or national tenants that have the leverage to demand it.

Before a prospective tenant signs a lease for space in your shopping center, it will want to know certain information about the center to make sure that the space will be advantageous to its business. The information it's interested in will most likely include items like the location of the barriers, common areas, curb cuts, entrances, exits, loading zones, other tenants, and parking areas; the size of spaces; the means of access to a space; and the size and location of the center's buildings.

Struggling tenants sometimes must prioritize which creditors to pay each month. If they think you'll put up with late rent, they may put you at the bottom of the list. If you don't want to lose the tenant for some reason—for example, the loss will upset the tenant mix or co-tenancy rights of the other tenants at your center or you're having trouble leasing up your office building—you may be tempted not to take any action the first couple of times that the tenant is late with its rent and hope that it'll start paying on time again.

Commercial real estate law has been applied largely the same way for hundreds of years, since feudal times. But a recent opinion by the Court of Appeals of New York, regarding a dispute between a Manhattan movie theater tenant and the owner of the building where it rented space for its multiplex cinema, has dramatically changed the amount of leeway owners will have when making unauthorized changes to tenant-occupied space.

Keeping the operating costs that you pass through to tenants low gives your shopping center or office building a competitive edge. So, to keep insurance costs low while making sure that you have adequate coverage, consider a policy with low premiums and a high deductible. But if you pass through a portion or all of those low premiums to tenants, you should negotiate the right to pass through a portion or all of the high deductible as well.

Don't be surprised if a prospective tenant—especially one with a growing business—asks for an expansion option in its lease. This clause reserves space owned by you, typically contiguous to the tenant's, when it becomes available. An expansion option is valuable to a tenant because if it needs to expand its operations, it'll have the opportunity to do so, but won't be obligated to take the space if it determines that it doesn't need it.