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

Rooftop solar can cut your electricity bill dramatically, but the upfront cost of buying panels stops many homeowners. Two popular alternatives let you go solar with little or nothing down: the solar lease and the solar power purchase agreement, or PPA. They sound similar, and salespeople sometimes use the terms interchangeably, but they work differently … Read more

Corporations use leases for far more than office space and company cars. For large real estate and equipment deals, finance teams sometimes use an exotic structure called a synthetic lease, designed to deliver tax benefits of ownership while keeping the asset off the balance sheet. It is one of the more creative instruments in corporate … Read more

You have driven your leased car for three years, kept up with every payment, and now the lease is ending. You return the keys expecting a clean goodbye, and then a bill arrives for several hundred dollars. That bill is the disposition fee, and it catches many lessees by surprise. A disposition fee is a … Read more

Common area maintenance charges are one of the most misunderstood line items in a commercial lease. Every year, tenants across the United States pay their CAM bills without question, even though industry experience shows that a meaningful share of those bills contain errors that favor the landlord. A CAM audit is a systematic review of … Read more

Opening a specialty coffee shop in a shopping center, only to watch the landlord lease the space next door to a competing coffee chain, is a nightmare scenario for retail tenants. Exclusivity clauses exist to prevent exactly that. They restrict the landlord from leasing space in the same property to businesses that compete directly with … Read more