Adam Bothun 
Receiving an eviction notice is frightening, but it is not the same as being evicted. An eviction notice is the first step in a legal process, and tenants have rights at every stage. Understanding what the notice means and what comes next can make the difference between losing your home and resolving the situation. Landlords … Read more
Moving out of a rental sounds simple until the paperwork gets involved. Most leases require tenants to give formal written notice before leaving, and getting the timing or format wrong can cost you an extra month of rent or even a legal dispute. A notice to vacate is the official document that tells your landlord … Read more
Shopping for commercial space means decoding an alphabet soup of lease types. Two of the most common, double net and triple net, sound nearly identical. The difference between them decides who pays for the roof over your head, literally. Both structures ask tenants to pay base rent plus a share of property operating expenses. The … Read more
Commercial leases come in many flavors, and the differences decide who pays for what. Among them, the absolute net lease stands out as the most landlord friendly structure in the industry. Tenants who sign one without understanding it can face surprise costs worth tens of thousands of dollars. An absolute net lease, sometimes called a … Read more
Imagine signing a commercial lease and discovering that your first three months of rent are completely free. That is not a fantasy or a landlord’s typo. It is called rent abatement, and it is one of the most powerful negotiating tools in commercial real estate. Rent abatement is a period during a lease when the … Read more
Few tenants thought much about force majeure clauses before 2020. Then a global pandemic shuttered businesses for months, and suddenly everyone wanted to know whether their lease excused them from paying rent. Courts across the country spent years answering that question, and the answers were not always what tenants hoped. A force majeure clause excuses … Read more
Missing rent is the most common trigger, but a commercial lease default can arise in many ways. Unauthorized alterations, unpermitted subletting, lapsed insurance, or simply going dark can all put a tenant in breach. What happens next depends on the lease language, state law, and how both sides handle the critical weeks after the default … Read more
Every lease eventually ends, but not every ending is clean. When a tenant needs out before the term expires, or when both sides simply want a tidy break, a lease surrender can provide a clear path forward. Done right, it ends the tenancy with no loose ends and no lingering liability. A lease surrender is … Read more
Imagine moving into a commercial space designed from the ground up for your exact business. The loading docks sit where you need them, the ceiling heights match your equipment, and the floor plan follows your workflow. That is the promise of a build-to-suit lease, one of the most tenant-friendly structures in commercial real estate. In … Read more
Most commercial leases give a tenant the right to use a building that already exists. A ground lease flips that idea on its head. Instead of renting finished space, the tenant leases bare land, usually for decades, and builds its own structure on top of it. When the lease ends, the land and everything built … Read more