When rent­ing a prop­er­ty for your com­mer­cial busi­ness, you must ensure that you under­stand exact­ly what you are com­mit­ting to. Although it can be tempt­ing to rush the Lease process in order to com­mence trad­ing from your new premis­es as soon as pos­si­ble, this may leave you trapped in a cost­ly agree­ment. When draft­ing or nego­ti­at­ing a com­mer­cial Lease, there are a num­ber of intri­ca­cies involved that you must be aware of and where the advice of an expe­ri­enced com­mer­cial prop­er­ty Solic­i­tor is essential.

The claus­es you want to find in the Lease

If you are leas­ing a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, ensure that the word­ing is to the ​‘Ten­ant’ instead of being per­son­al to you, oth­er­wise cor­po­rate ben­e­fits may be lost and it may be dif­fi­cult to assign the Lease if your busi­ness is sold.

As a Ten­ant, you will have rights of assign­ment which enable you to assign your Lease if you choose to move premis­es and/​or sell your busi­ness. How­ev­er, these rights should be checked, as the word­ing of this clause may some­times allow the Land­lord to refuse an assign­ment in cer­tain circumstances.

In leas­ing a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, you will gen­er­al­ly require busi­ness facil­i­ties such as sig­nage and park­ing, so it is vital that these details are includ­ed in the Lease. If your prop­er­ty is locat­ed in a com­mer­cial area, then check the Lease for exclu­siv­i­ty claus­es to clar­i­fy whether or not a com­peti­tor can Lease a neigh­bour­ing property.

The Lease claus­es you need to avoid

Run­ning a busi­ness means that you can­not afford to ​‘waste’ mon­ey, and accord­ing­ly you should be wary of ​‘holdover’ and ​‘per­cent­age rate’ claus­es. These claus­es may com­mit you to pay­ing two or three times rent if you stay on beyond your lease date and can enti­tle the Land­lord to addi­tion­al rent on top of your basic rent.

The loca­tion of your busi­ness may be essen­tial to its suc­cess so you must ensure that your Lease pro­tects this. Some Leas­es have relo­ca­tion claus­es that allow your land­lord to move your busi­ness­es with­in a cer­tain area or radius restric­tions that pre­vent you from expand­ing your busi­ness with­in a cer­tain radius of the prop­er­ty that you have leased.

Demo­li­tion and default claus­es can result in you being forced out of your prop­er­ty if the prop­er­ty and/​or com­mer­cial area requires rede­vel­op­ment or demol­ish­ment, and as such this is some­thing that must be clar­i­fied in your com­mer­cial Lease.

Giv­en the intri­ca­cies of nego­ti­at­ing a Lease for a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty, it is wise to seek pro­fes­sion­al help from a com­mer­cial prop­er­ty law Solicitor.

To see how we can help to safe­guard your busi­ness or to dis­cuss com­mer­i­cal prop­er­ty, please get in touch with Luke Hewitt on 01625 523988 or mail@​JBGass.​com