Protecting Your Rights as a Tenant Begins with Reading the Lease

Protecting Your Rights as a Tenant Begins with Reading the Lease

As a brokerage firm, we have been disappointed with some of the attorneys reviewing our client’s leases. Why would this be? An attorney is an attorney, right? So you’d think. But you’d be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Assuming all attorneys are alike is no different than asking your gynecologist to help you diagnose a rare skin disease. Not all doctors are the same, and neither are all attorneys.

As a tenant advocate, we do a lot of work upfront to protect our client. Then we find ourselves in situations where the lease isn’t reviewed by the attorney, or if it is, it’s done by some ‘fill in the blank’ attorney who isn’t really paying attention. Many people assume they don’t need an attorney with tenant experience, and hand the lease off to any old person. That’s where our clients lose protection. All the work we’ve done upfront can be tarnished by a lease that’s unread. We always want to ensure our tenant’s leases are fair. To help, we’ve put together a form of items that should be reviewed by your attorney for every lease. While we’re not attorneys ourselves, we’ve managed over 1,000 office leases, and I’ll go on record as saying that my insight and experience is a lot more relevant than that of an attorney who took one semester of real estate law back in law school. If you don’t plan to hire a tenant advocate who is going to look after your firm’s rights, than please, do yourself a favor, and always hire a real estate attorney!

About the Author

Lynn Drake’s status is well known in the industry: She’s the commercial realtor focused on maintaining “true north” for her corporate clients. It’s a reputation built on 35 years of commercial real estate experience. Lynn became a commercial realtor in 2001 after 15 years in corporate real estate. Thus far in her career, Lynn has successfully completed over 1,500 real estate transactions ranging from small business tenant leases to the sale and purchase of industrial complexes.