Houston Commercial Lease Lawyer
Choosing the right property for your commercial space will be crucial to your overall success. A Houston commercial lease lawyer can help ensure that the lease you wind up signing will not turn into a liability later on. This is an important factor to consider, as the future success of your business could depend heavily upon leasing a commercial space.
This quick guide will provide you with more information on how the Weisblatt Law Firm can assist your company with these important details. Keep reading to learn more.
How Can a Commercial Lease Attorney Help Me?
Whenever you are leasing space or equipment from another individual or business, you should sign a lease agreement that sets out the specific terms of the lease in writing. While the main purpose of a lease is to give the property owner certain rights and protections, the terms of the lease are also very important for your business. An unfair or incomplete lease can leave your business vulnerable and affect your overall success. For this reason, you should protect your company by having a skilled Houston commercial lease attorney review a lease before you sign it.
Houston commercial real estate attorney Andrew Weisblatt regularly reviews and negotiates commercial lease agreements to make sure your best interests are protected.
The Weisblatt Law Firm works with all types of business clients trying to lease all types of properties, so please do not hesitate to contact our Houston office at (713) 666-1981 to discuss your specific situation. We would be glad to help.
Houston Commercial Lease Lawyer Review
Most landlords draft their own commercial leases. Therefore, the leases tend to heavily favor the landlord’s interests in many cases. This means that some provisions may not be favorable to you — the tenant — and some may actually be unfair or unlawful.
A business lease lawyer knows that commercial lease agreements are often voluminous, with many provisions written in technical legal language. This makes it difficult for a business owner who is not familiar with commercial real estate law to completely understand all the relevant provisions and identify any potentially unfair terms.
Too many business owners sign commercial leases without realizing the adverse effects the lease terms may have down the road. A Houston commercial lease lawyer can help you avoid any pitfalls.
There are many provisions in a lease that a commercial lease agreement lawyer looks out for, knowing they may be harmful to a business tenant. They include the following.
Inaccurate Property Description
Many landlords base commercial rents on the square footage of a commercial space. However, if the landlord owns more than one unit or property, they may reuse the same commercial lease for different tenants. An inaccurate property description in your lease can result in inflated prices and other problematic concerns.
Options for the Landlord to Terminate the Lease Early
When you glance over a commercial lease, you may not realize that it allows the landlord the right to terminate the lease early but not the tenant. Imagine that you fully set up shop, make adjustments to the space, purchase equipment, and settle in, only for the landlord to try to terminate the lease months later. Needless to say, this can be costly for any company owner.
Passing Variable Costs onto the Tenant
Your business already has plenty of operating expenses, so the last thing you need is to add on operating expenses for your commercial property. Some leases pass on numerous expenses to tenants, including utilities, property taxes, building repairs, and common-area maintenance fees. These numbers can vary substantially from month to month, and all of a sudden, your rent could be significantly higher due to variable costs that a landlord passed onto you in the lease agreement.
Limiting Subleases
If you determine that you do not need the entire commercial space you leased, or if you decide to downsize, you likely do not want to keep paying for the space you do not use. Subleasing to another company is often an attractive option in this situation.
Additionally, if for some reason you need to completely move out of the space before your lease expires, you can sublease the space to prevent penalties for early lease termination. However, if your lease limits your ability to sublease part or all of the property, you could be stuck paying for a lot of space you do not need.
Limitations on How the Space Is Used
“Use” clauses are particularly important for many commercial tenants, and there are different types of clauses you should worry about.
First, some landlords include clauses stating that you cannot use the space in certain ways. Imagine that you have a bakery and sign a lease, not realizing that it states you cannot install an oven. Once you install the oven, the landlord may claim you are in breach of the agreement and cannot run your intended business.
There are also exclusive-use clauses that mandate that only one tenant in the property can run a certain type of business. This term is positive if it is in your favor, as you can limit your competition. However, if another tenant has an exclusive-use clause, it could severely limit your ability to conduct business in certain situations.
Creating Personal Liability on the Lease for the Owner of the Business
When you operate as a sole proprietor or a general partnership, owners will always be personally liable for business debts. This means that if your company does not have the funds to pay your commercial rent, the property owner can come after your personal accounts, home, and other assets.
While LLCs and corporations provide protections from personal liability for business debts, some landlords try to include lease terms to have access to personal funds. Commercial leases may include terms that require a business owner to personally guarantee the lease, which means they could try to seize personal assets regardless of the type of business entity you own.
The Value of a Business Lease Attorney
In addition to making sure a lease includes no unfair terms, a business lease attorney also wants to ensure that clauses in commercial leases exist to protect a client’s rights in the landlord-tenant arrangement. Such terms may include limiting how the landlord can rent nearby spaces, which is an exclusive-use clause in a tenant’s favor. For example, if you run a hair salon, you do not want your landlord renting to another hair salon two doors down that will compete with you and potentially limit your customers. It is just as important to protect the rights of the tenant in a commercial lease, though some landlords will not voluntarily include these provisions.
To discuss your case in greater detail, call Houston commercial lease lawyer Andrew Weisblatt at (713) 666-1981.
A Commercial Lease Attorney Negotiates on Your Behalf
When our business lease lawyer reviews a commercial lease and finds potentially unfavorable terms, it does not necessarily mean that leasing that space is out of the question. Instead, The Weisblatt Law Firm regularly engages in negotiations with commercial landlords to try to amend or update certain terms to better protect the rights and interests of the lessee.
Often, a commercial property owner may be using a standard boilerplate lease, and they may not even realize that some of the terms may be unattractive to tenants. Additionally, property owners may be highly motivated to lease a space as quickly as possible, so they may be more than willing to adjust lease terms to better suit the tenant. Often, having the right commercial lease agreement lawyer sitting down at the negotiating table can make all the difference in getting the lease terms you need.
Should a dispute arise regarding your existing lease, our law firm can represent you in resolving the conflict. A dispute does not have to result in eviction, financial losses, or unnecessary liability. Our firm will work to protect the rights of you and your business.
Questions to Ask About a Commercial Lease
Before signing a commercial lease, there are several questions you should ask yourself about Texas real estate and the lease specifically. The answers can be important. If you don’t know the answers, talking to a Houston commercial lease lawyer should be your next step.
- What are my options regarding the length of the lease?
- Does the square footage include storage space or outdoor covered space?
- What happens if I have a dispute with the landlord? Am I required to go to mediation?
- Does the cost of the lease include any buildouts?
- Does the cost of the lease include utilities such as water, electricity, and trash removal?
- What is the penalty if I break the lease?
- Does the lease cover the cost of signage, or is the tenant responsible for that cost?
- Are there restroom facilities available as part of the lease? If so, where?
- Who are the tenants on either side of the commercial space I’m considering?
- What if I sell my business? Can the new owner assume the lease?
You likely have many more questions. The best thing to do is write down your questions so you don’t forget any before discussing them with the landlord.
Why Choose Us
You might be wondering, among the many commercial lease lawyers there are to choose from in the Houston area, why choose Weisblatt? We pride ourselves on providing comprehensive business law services with a personal touch that always ensures that each client gets the one-on-one attention they deserve. This is hard to find among law firms today.
In addition to this, attorney Andrew Weisblatt carries with him decades of legal experience working with both small and large companies. Attorney Weisblatt deeply understands the unique needs of business owners in Texas and is committed to providing personal and transparent services to help you achieve your goals.
Beyond commercial lease assistance, our firm can also provide you with essential legal counsel for your business, including employment contracts, articles of incorporation, securing permits, and securing important licenses. We are here to assist with legal needs both big and small that impact business owners.
How We Can Help
Let’s look at some of the ways a commercial real estate lawyer can help your business.
We Properly Complete the Necessary Paperwork
As a Texas business owner, you will be required to submit legal documentation and paperwork often. Ensuring that this paperwork is completed properly and filed properly can be overwhelming if you do not personally understand the legal system. The Weisblatt Law Firm can help you with these tasks so that you don’t lose money or opportunities due to paperwork mistakes.
We Evaluate the Risks of Investments
This can be a truly important benefit of having Andrew Weisblatt on your side. Our team can help perform additional research on a property to help determine if it is a valuable property or not.
Sometimes a property can look great, but legal obstacles could be hiding beneath the surface that would greatly affect the property’s true value. Our team can help uncover important information concerning properties that might not be obvious at first. This can help you avoid costly bad investments and legal entanglements later on.
We’re Experienced Negotiators
When real estate is involved, there can often be a great deal of negotiation that needs to take place. Even if you think of yourself as a smart investor, that does not necessarily mean you are great at negotiating. If you want a strong negotiator on your side to ensure that you are always getting the best deal, our legal team can help.
We’ll Help You Find Out About New Opportunities
Another way a commercial lease lawyer in Houston can help is by keeping our clients up to date on new opportunities that might benefit them. We have a vast network of connections in the Houston real estate market and often know of great opportunities before anyone else. Having this added boost on real estate information in your area can be highly beneficial.
Contact an Experienced Houston Commercial Lease Lawyer for Help Today
If you need to sign a commercial lease, you should always first contact the Weisblatt Law Firm, PLLC, in Houston for commercial lease review or commercial lease drafting. Whether it’s 3,000 square feet or 50,000 square feet, seeking the assistance and counsel of a Houston commercial lease attorney can help protect your business as well as resolve disputes should they arise regarding your commercial lease. Where commercial leases are concerned, an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure.
Don’t get into a lease that you later regret. Allow a skilled Houston commercial lease lawyer to provide the legal protection you need. Do not hesitate to call today at (713) 666-1981 or email us for more information about our business law services.
Attorney Andrew Weisblatt
Mr. Weisblatt has practiced continuously since becoming licensed in 1992 and has represented businesses ranging in size from one person start-up ventures to multi-national corporations employing hundreds of people in multiple countries. From 2005 through 2009 Mr. Weisblatt was in-house counsel and chief operating officer of a multi-national corporation in the steel products industry. That in-house position provided valuable insight into how businesses work and what they actually need from their lawyers – both in-house and outside counsel. Attorney Bio
