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Filling a vacant space while your building is undergoing renovations can be tricky. Your lease needs to protect you from a new tenant who feels entitled to terminate his lease or sue you because portions of the space or common areas aren’t usable during construction. Our video gives you five quick tips for how to protect yourself: Five Tips for Limiting Constructio...

Co-working companies have reportedly caused a disruption in the marketplace in terms of how owners reward brokers for securing licenses and short-term leases. WeWork has reportedly been incentivizing brokers in a more aggressive structure than is typical in the industry.

If you require a tenant to have a guarantor before signing a lease, consider whether you want the guaranty to apply to renewal or extension terms created by future amendments to the lease. If so, make sure your lease and amendments specify that the guaranty will be “continuing,” so that the guarantor remains on the hook.

When a tenant insists on having its space delivered by a "drop-dead date" it has the potential to expose you to a variety of draconian consequences if the date isn’t met. That's why negotiations over this request are extremely important. If you don't carve out rights for yourself, you could end up giving the tenant free rent, or worse, suffering significant monetary penalties, and even the ability for the tenant to terminate the lease agreement. ...

Private commercial real estate continues to produce steady returns, in line with long-term expectations, according to the recently released UBS US Real Estate Summary. The authors report that CRE investors expect returns to slow in line with historical performance. With rent growth positive and the economy growing, expectations are for continued growth through 2019, though at a less robust rate than last year.

It’s critical to take action—by enforcing the lease for a tenant experiencing financial difficulty—as soon as that tenant sends a partial rent payment or misses a rent payment altogether. Regardless of how important the tenant is to your building or center, worry about yourself first. Quickly deal with the issue to prevent the tenant from inadvertently modifying the terms of the lease.

If you defaulted on the mortgage loan for your office building or center because a major tenant didn’t pay its rent, leaving you short of money to make a loan payment, it seems only fair that the delinquent tenant should have to reimburse you for the loan-related damages you had to pay to the lender. But if your lease doesn’t allow you to recover loan-related damages from a delinquent tenant, you’ll miss the chance for reimbursement.

Identify all of the documents comprising the lease in any estoppel certificate you give to a tenant to sign. Alternatively, you can attach a copy of the lease and all of those documents to the estoppel certificate as an exhibit. Then there shouldn't be any gaps when the tenant certifies that its entire lease is in full force and effect and that all lease amendments and modifications are true and correct.

You can’t use any of the tenant’s trade names, trademarks, logos, and designs in your marketing materials unless you first get the tenant’s consent. Why? Because they are its “intellectual property.” And if the tenant decides to withhold its consent, or you never ask, but you print them in your marketing materials anyway, the tenant could sue you for trademark infringement.

If you grant a license to kiosks and carts to conduct business at your center, make sure that you audit the books and records of a set percentage of those kiosks and carts each year to verify their gross sales. It’s not uncommon for kiosks and carts to submit gross sales statements that underreport their gross sales. Assuming your kiosk or cart license agreement gives you the right to audit, auditing the kiosks or carts helps deter them from underreporting their g...