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Your lease with a tenant might have provisions that aren’t typical but were negotiated to serve a specific purpose. While provisions that are tailored to you and your tenant’s deal can certainly work in your favor, unusual lease provisions can leave you open to liability in some instances. For example, they can change the standard “duty of care” you would have to protect your tenant and its employees. That loophole can leave you open to litigatio...
Q: I defaulted on the mortgage loan for my office building because a major tenant didn’t pay its rent, leaving me short of money to make a loan payment. It seems only fair that the delinquent tenant should have to reimburse me for the loan-related damages I had to pay to the lender. But my lease doesn’t address recovering loan-related damages from a delinquent tenant. Have I missed the chance for reimburs...
The new trend toward holding commercial landlords liable for the illegal activities of their tenants is extremely disconcerting. It requires landlords to take unprecedented measures and exert significant efforts to protect themselves from liability exposure to court-awarded damages for their tenant’s illegal activities. And lawsuits brought by luxury brands against landlords seem to be ramping up. So how can you protect yourself from being embroiled in the fight a...
A Pennsylvania case should serve as a reminder that owners can't deny tenants' access to their space if restrictions aren't provided for in the lease. There, a restaurant tenant signed a lease for space in a food court area of an office building.
Technological advances that provide security and convenience for users are being made in leaps and bounds, and even the traditional commercial real estate industry is benefitting—most recently, from digital signature software. Traditional methods of executing leases and related documents—that is, ink-on-paper signatures—leave the door open for potential misunderstandings and even fraud.
Q: The triple-net lease I signed with a stand-alone tenant at my shopping center provides that the tenant will pay its pro rata share of management fees and maintenance for the common areas, and that it will be responsible for the maintenance tasks for its own area. I recently hired a property management company for the center and...
To maximize your property’s value and profit, limiting premises liability should be a priority for you—and you should communicate this to your property manager, who’s most likely to hear about and react to injuries before you do. To make sure your property manager understands the importance of preventing personal injuries and reacting to them appropriately when they do occur, make sure she is familiar with...
You may want to negotiate to keep your tenant's fixtures—for example, lights, seating, or shelves that are attached to its space—after it moves out. But what if you change your mind later and want the tenant to remove and take its fixtures with it before it leaves? You can carve out that option in the lease by specifying that you will provide notice to the tenant at a certain point before the term is over th...
Dry cleaners, gas stations, and auto service centers provide goods and services that many people don't want to give up. But the chemicals they require to operate their businesses pose potential environmental risks at the properties where they operate. If you're nervous about leasing space to an environmentally risky tenant, but the deal is too good to give up, you can limit your liability by negotiating protections ...
Q: I’m contemplating signing a lease with a tenant that will require the tenant to construct its own building at my shopping center and require me to pay a construction allowance within a certain period of time after the tenant opens for business. The tenant is negotiating for provisions allowing it, in the event that I don&...
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