Adam Bothun 
A dream job offer arrives, but it is three states away and your lease has eight months left. This is one of the most common reasons tenants break leases, and also one of the most misunderstood. A new job does not automatically let you walk away from a lease, but it does open several practical … Read more
Coming home to find your landlord has been inside your apartment is unsettling, even when nothing is missing. Tenants often ask whether a landlord can legally enter without notice, and the answer depends on where you live, why the landlord entered, and what the lease says. In most states, the answer is no, except in … Read more
Leasing farmland is one of the oldest forms of land tenure in America, and it remains the backbone of US agriculture. Nearly 40 percent of American farmland is rented, and for many landowners a farm lease is the most important contract they will ever sign. Yet farm leases are often done on a handshake or … Read more
Solar developers are leasing farmland across the United States at a remarkable pace, and for many rural landowners a solar ground lease is the most profitable use their acreage will ever see. A solar lease can pay 500 to 2,000 dollars per acre per year for 25 to 35 years, dwarfing typical farm rental income. … Read more
For a landowner with property along a busy highway, a billboard lease can turn a strip of otherwise unusable land into a steady income stream. Outdoor advertising companies pay landowners for the right to erect and maintain billboards, and well-located signs along interstates can generate thousands of dollars a month for decades. Like cell tower … Read more
A letter arrives offering a landowner several hundred dollars a month to host a cell tower on a corner of the property. It looks like easy money, and in many ways it is. Cell tower leases are among the most lucrative small-footprint leases a landowner can sign, often paying thousands of dollars a month for … Read more
Office tenants often sign a lease quoting one square footage and then discover they are paying for more. The extra footage comes from the load factor, also called the loss factor, which adds a tenant’s share of common areas to the rentable area of the suite. Understanding this math is essential, because the load factor … Read more
When tenants tour an industrial building, the first thing many look at is the rent. The experienced ones look up. Clear height, the distance from the finished floor to the lowest point of the ceiling structure, determines how much product a warehouse can actually hold. Two buildings with the same square footage can offer wildly … Read more
Medical office leases look like ordinary office leases until they do not. Beneath the familiar structure of base rent, operating expenses, and renewal options sit issues unique to healthcare: patient privacy regulations, specialized build-outs, exclusive-use protections, and compliance regimes that can make a standard lease clause unworkable. Tenants and landlords who treat a medical lease … Read more
Opening a franchise means satisfying two demanding parties at once: the franchisor, which controls the brand, and the landlord, which controls the real estate. Each has its own requirements for the lease, and those requirements do not always align. A franchisee who signs a lease that the franchisor rejects, or a franchise agreement that the … Read more