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Somerville, Mass., can take home a win after its three-year legal battle with the owner of a former Star Market property in the Davis Square neighborhood over development of the site. After the market was closed in 2007, the owner sued the city after it rejected the owner’s new plans for the lot. The city determined that the owner wouldn’t be able to open a discount store there. The city reasoned that such a store was not consistent with newly established &q...

Effectively managing snow and ice accumulations is a critical component of maintaining commercial properties in a safe condition. Tenants typically want owners to be responsible for snow and ice removal, and owners want to maintain full control of when and how that gets accomplished. But it’s important to specify this in the lease, if that’s how you want to handle snow removal at your property.

If you have even one tenant in your building or center that refuses to follow your recycling program, it could cost you in fines and penalties. That's because many localities around the country are enacting tougher requirements for garbage and waste recycling. The Austin City Council passed a new ordinance that took effect in 2012, requiring commercial complexes, including large and small office buildings, to start offering recycling services on site.

Q: During lease negotiations for space in my medical office building, a physical therapist shocked me by demanding an exclusive. The physical therapist wants me to agree not to rent to any other tenant that will use its space primarily for physical therapy purposes. I've heard of granting exclusives to retailers, but never to medical tenants. Is this situation unique?

If you're negotiating a lease with a retail tenant that wants to devote part of its space to storage, make sure the lease limits the size of that storage area. Otherwise, you could lose percentage rent if the tenant devotes too much space to the storage area and not enough space to retail uses. That’s because a storage area doesn't generate sales.

Foreign investors have found a stable commercial real estate market to pursue: Downtown Washington, D.C., office buildings. Washington’s commercial real estate has bounced back from the recession more quickly than other metropolitan areas of the country, thanks to stimulus spending measures from the federal government, and overseas investors are taking advantage of the opportunity.

Q: I’ve been advised to use a “guaranty” as security for the leases with tenants at my office building. How exactly does a guaranty work, and how can I make sure that mine works effectively?

If you give in to a demand by a tenant that you describe its space in the lease by a square footage amount, make sure that you don’t describe it as being “approximately” a certain square footage. That language could end up pinning you down to an exact amount. That’s because using the word “approximately” can cause you problems if the tenant later challenges your calculation of the square footage.

Commercial real estate investment has stayed predictably strong in certain American markets, namely New York City with $9.9 billion worth of investment. But other U.S. cities are getting a run for their money by foreign cities that have surprisingly made the cut on a list of investment hotspots around the globe. A quarterly survey conducted by real estate consulting company Jones Lang LaSalle outlined the top 10 cities for real estate investment in the fourth quarter of...

When a tenant defaults on its lease, commonly because its business fell through, owners are generally required to try to find a new tenant for the space in a reasonable amount of time. However, the defaulting tenant is on the hook for rent for the remainder of the lease, unless a new tenant fills the vacant space. If that happens, then the defaulting tenant is liable only for unpaid rent for the time between its default and when the new tenant fills the vacant space.