I love the shows Pawn Stars, American Pickers and Mysteries at the Museum. With these shows, they find an item that interests them, authenticate it and then give a bit of history on the piece. As geeky as it may sound, there can be identifiable histories to leases and lease language. Did you ever pick… Continue reading “I need to call in my friend Pete to get some more information about this lease…”
There are a few percentage rent calculation issues that make me happy (from a landlord perspective. If you are a tenant, you hate these!). True partial lease years – where a sales for a portion of a year are compared to the breakpoint for a portion of the year, and the tenant pays sales on… Continue reading The percentage rent unicorn
Over the years, we have worked on 150+ tenant regional malls where the sellesr had been using 3-4 expense pools per prorata expense category, and we have also worked on 20 tenant open air centers where the seller had been using 20 different expense pools. What’s right? As new variables are introduced into leases, the… Continue reading How many expense pools are required?
I have mentioned in prior blogs that one of the things I love about lease administration is that everything you need to know about the lease is right there in 40-50 pages of the lease (sometimes as few as 2-3 pages, but sometimes as many as 500+). But, unless there are outside rules specifically addressed… Continue reading Intelligent people will argue
In prior posts, we have addressed why there are excluded areas defined for purposes of calculating prorata shares of taxes or CAM. In a nutshell, if a part of a property is not paying a full prorata share of expenses, any shortfall has to be absorbed by the landlord. For example, we have a fully… Continue reading Poof! A $40m value swing because of lease language.
There is a subtle difference in prorate share definitions that you might miss if you are not looking for it. But, believe me, sophisticated national and regional tenants are looking for it. In defining excluded areas, a lease will often read: “the tenant will pays its prorate share of the charges based upon the gross… Continue reading Excluded Areas – Premises vs. Occupants
It is not uncommon for a municipality to work with a property owner to them achieve some mutually beneficial goal – usually because the project might not otherwise be feasible without some sort of public assistance. Among the reasons a municipality may be considering the inventive,, they may be doing it to bring new jobs,… Continue reading Realizing the intended benefit of a tax abatement
In any given year, we (my company, Meridian Realty Consultants) will read and abstract 8-10,000 leases. We get to see what landlords and tenants spend their time negotiating. It is not uncommon for someone in the office to say, “Can you believe someone took the time to negotiate this?” It might be something as simple… Continue reading Negotiate your leases wisely!
The short answer? The lease should specifically address whether taxes are reconciled as part of operating expenses or are reconciled separately. But, why should this matter? This week, we were working on an office tower acquisition in the southeast. The majority of the leases had the typical “tenant pays a proportionate share in excess of… Continue reading Office leases – Are taxes part of operating expenses?
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