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Don’t sign a lease with a federal, state, or municipal government agency unless and until it gets all of the approvals necessary to enter the lease. If the approvals aren’t all in place, the signed lease may turn out to be void or voidable by the government tenant ...
It’s neither contradictory nor uncommon to lease space to a tenant in “as-is” condition while also promising to maintain some or all of that space, such as the roof or parking lot, until the transfer is complete. You just need to be careful about how you word the obligation.
A lease amendment is usually simpler and easier—but not always better.
Lease amendment or new lease? It’s easy to overlook the importance of controlling the mechanics of the renewal process. Consider the scenario where a tenant exercises its option to renew the lease. Normally, you’d execute the renewal by having the tenant sign a lease amendment that lists the new renewal rent and termination date while leaving all of the other original lease terms unchanged.
Q:Most tenants at my property require certain amenities and they won’t sign leases for space there if they don’t get them. But I’ve heard of circumstances under which office building and retail property owners have had to get rid of amenities. How can I carve out a right to eliminate amenities in the future if it becomes necessary?
It’s important to send tenants and other parties all notices the lease requires you to provide even if you think they already know the information the notice contains. Your supposition about the tenant’s knowledge may be 100 percent correct. But even if the required notification would come as “old news,” failure to provide it may endanger your rights under the lease.
If you use a standard lease form that includes blanks for listing appropriate information, don’t leave any of the blanks empty. If you do and end up in a dispute with a tenant, you open the door to the court’s interpreting the meaning of the blank space using “parol” or external evidence in the tenant’s favor. And that can end up costing you big bucks.
On June 20, Commercial Lease Law Insider received the Gold Award for Best Newsletter from the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE). A panel of expert judges from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University selected the award winners announced at NAREE’s annual conference in Austin last week, from a record number of entries.
About every 30 seconds, somebody commits a violent crime in the U.S., according to the FBI. Crimes occur in stores, malls, office buildings, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, theaters, medical centers, parking garages, and countless other kinds of properties that are commercially leased. And when they do, victims are apt to sue the property owner for not doing enough to safeguard their security.
Percentage rent leases commonly permit tenants to deduct or exclude certain kinds of transactions that don’t generate a profit for the tenant from the gross sales on which percentage rent is due. Typical examples include revenues from gift wrapping, deliveries, repairs to items purchased from the tenant, and discount sales to employees. The problem is that these services and sales may, in fact, generate significant revenue and profits.