“Keep it simple, stupid!” That hits home so often as I am reading leases. I have taught classes for ICSC for nearly 25 years. One of my favorite example has been base rents or fixed CAM charges increased by the CPI. That in and of itself is pretty simple. But, you often see caps on… Continue reading Applying the K.I.S.S. method in leases
Last year, upon returning from ICSC’s John T. Riordan School of Professional Development in Minneapolis, I felt the need to write a blog entry on the use of “ALWAYS” and “NEVER” when referring to commercial leases. In short, the only absolute that may exist in commercial real estate is that there are no absolutes. This… Continue reading Two words that STILL don’t exist in commercial real estate (this time related to sales reporting and percentage rent)
A while back, we had addressed the “percentage rent unicorn” – that landlord dream within a dream (Hopefully, you are thinking The Princess Bride right now) – where landlords can bill percentage rent over a monthly breakpoint with no annual reconciliation. It is not something we see often, but when we do, it often leads… Continue reading The percentage rent unicorn revisited
If you have followed this lease administration blog for the past couple of years, or even if you have just stumbled upon it because of a question you have had related to some lease related term, you are the type of person that would absolutely benefit from ICSC’s John T Riordan School for Retail Real… Continue reading John T Riordan School for Retail Real Estate Professionals
It is not uncommon for a landlord to provide or arrange services for the actual tenant premises within a shopping center. Perhaps the tenants are provided water services to their spaces through one water main/meter, or the landlord arranges for trash removal from the premises rather than having each individual tenant arrange the service themselves.… Continue reading Premises trash and utilities vs. common area trash and utilities
When we are verifying rents at a property, we do all of our calculations – prorata shares, caps, breakpoints, CPI calculations, lease year language applications and so on – prior to looking at what the current landlord has done. I don’t know about you, but I can be fairly easily led by what someone else… Continue reading An approach to lease administration and due diligence
We will not complete the date fields in a lease abstract until we know which dates we are going to use as the Commencement Date and the Rent Commencement Date. That can be incredibly frustrating for anyone that has to deal with us. Think about that. You’ve just executed a lease and you want a… Continue reading It’s just a couple of days
There’s no doubt that prorata CAM, tax and insurance calculations can be tricky. You have to make sure the shopping center definition is correct, the expenses are correct, the method of calculating the leasable area is correct, the method of calculating vacancies is correct, the definition of excluded area is correct, the treatment of excluded… Continue reading Be explicit – even fixed CAM can be tricky
The majority of national and regional tenant leases contain some sort of tenant-negotiated restriction. It may be an exclusive use, or a specific prohibited use in the center (no educational facilities), or a site line restriction, or a restriction against a type of use within x feet of the premises (no food uses within 200’… Continue reading Unique remedy language in the event of a violation
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