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If you own a shopping center or office building and have financial difficulties, you may be dealing with one, or even several, liens filed against the property. A savvy tenant knows that if it doesn’t have priority if you become bankrupt, it could be dramatically affected, up to and including having to move out of its space. That’s why it might demand that you agree to sign a “memorandum of lease” when you sign the lease with it.

The standard lease form that you use might require a tenant to add you to its commercial general liability (CGL) policy as an “additional named insured.” You might think that this additional named insured status gives you the same rights as the tenant under its CGL policy, and that’s why you have been operating this way, but there can be disadvantages.

Before retaining a real estate attorney for a new deal, don’t spend time and money disclosing the deal’s details to her before you are sure that no conflict of interest exists that could prevent her from fairly representing your interests. This applies whether the attorney is new to you or one with whom you have worked in the past.

Owners who lease space to large national retail tenants know that their demands can be hard to resist. Use of the space is the number one concern for these tenants. Often, they ask for flexibility in their use of the space that puts owners at a disadvantage. A lease that allows a tenant to use the space for a wide variety of uses—such as “for any lawful purpose” or “any lawful retail purpose”—can be troublesome.

While owning a shopping center or office building can be very profitable, it also exposes landlords to liability for a variety of things, such as injuries. You can’t stop third parties from suing you if they’re injured after hours by someone in your building or center—but there is good news: You can protect yourself financially in other ways. For example, make a tenant pay for the actions of its visitors, agents, employees, and subtenants.

Q: I defaulted on a lease for space at a small shopping center. The landlord is claiming that damages from the default reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. I disagree and have calculated damages that are significantly lower. The landlord and its bookkeeper are planning to testify at trial regarding the losses it suffered. Will the court automatically agree that these charges are correct?

Many tenants need to customize the space they lease, whether it’s in an office building or shopping center. But altering space—even for simple improvements—can be complicated. So when signing leases, you’ll want to have a work letter agreement—a contract that establishes the terms and conditions of structural changes that will be made to the tenant’s space prior to moving in.

Hearing the term “drop-dead date” when negotiating your lease with a tenant is usually stress inducing. That’s because the tenant typically would want you to suffer stiff consequences if the drop-dead date—that is, the date by which the space must be delivered—isn’t met. Free rent, significant monetary penalties, and, sometimes, a termination option are some requests tenants make.

In all commercial real estate leases, it’s of the utmost importance that definitions are unambiguous and cover foreseeable events. For example, damage and destruction in the space is a possibility anywhere, whether in retail or office building properties. But if you want to make the tenant responsible for damage to the property, you’ll need to specify where the damage would be. Designating whether damage that is the tenant’s problem is “exterior” or “interior” is key.

Tenants large and small are attracted to the best deals for commercial space. But savvy tenants know that bottom line-friendly deals aren’t limited to items like comparatively low base rent rates or generous concessions and improvement allowances that beat offers from other landlords. Especially if you need to fill vacancies at your center or office building, it’s important to let tenants know that you’ll do your best to control seemingly small costs that can add up.