Representation, run as a fiduciary duty.

A limited personal guarantee, standard in New York and spreading elsewhere. The guarantor is liable for rent only until the tenant vacates, returns the keys, and leaves the space in the agreed condition with proper notice. It protects the landlord from a tenant going dark while capping the guarantor's downside.

Negotiate the notice period down, define surrender condition precisely, and push for a burn-off as the company hits revenue or net worth milestones. An unlimited guarantee dressed as a good guy clause is neither.

Landlords size deposits to perceived credit risk, and for growth companies the opening ask can reach six to twelve months of rent. A letter of credit usually beats cash: it preserves working capital and is easier to step down.

Negotiate a scheduled burndown tied to time or financial milestones, not landlord discretion. Define the draw conditions narrowly so a disputed invoice cannot drain your collateral.

A full corporate guarantee puts the whole entity behind the lease for the whole term. The negotiation is about scope: cap the dollar exposure, limit the duration, and define exactly which obligations are covered.

Tie guarantee reduction to audited financial covenants. For VC-backed companies, resist guarantees that survive a change of control. Your acquirer's lawyers will thank you.

Stay one day past expiration and holdover clauses typically jump rent to 150 to 200 percent, and the worst versions add consequential damages if the landlord loses a replacement tenant. Buildouts slip. Moves slip. This clause is where slippage gets expensive.

Cap the multiplier, kill consequential damages, and negotiate a defined grace period at a reasonable rate. Better: align the lease expiration with realistic delivery of your next space.

An option to renew is leverage you buy at signing and exercise when you have the least of it. Fixed-rate or capped options beat fair market value resets, and the FMV definition and arbitration mechanics matter as much as the rate.

Watch the notice window. Miss a 12-month notice date by a week and the option is gone. We calendar these for clients for the life of the lease.

A break right at year five or seven converts a ten-year liability into a managed risk. Landlords price it via termination fees, usually unamortized TI and commissions plus a few months of rent. For contractors on option-year revenue, this is mission insurance.

Align break dates with your contract cycle, funding milestones, or program decision points. Negotiate the fee formula now, not when you need the exit.

Rights of first offer and first refusal on adjacent space cost little at signing and solve the problem growth companies actually have: the building filling up around them. A hard expansion option with defined economics is stronger than either.

Get the right to extend your base lease term when you exercise expansion rights, so the two spaces never fall out of sync.

The TI allowance funds your buildout, but the mechanics decide its real value: when it disburses, what costs qualify, what documentation each draw requires, and what happens to unused dollars.

Negotiate disbursement against invoices during construction, not reimbursement after completion, to protect cash flow. Convert unused allowance to free rent rather than forfeiting it.

Concession months are real economics, often worth more than a rate reduction of the same headline size. Whether abatement is gross (everything) or net (base rent only, opex still due) changes its value materially.

Spread abatement strategically. Front-loaded free rent helps cash flow during buildout and move. Make sure abated months still count toward option and milestone timelines.

Fixed annual bumps, CPI adjustments, or operating expense pass-throughs over a base year. In a base year structure, the integrity of that base year is everything: an artificially low base inflates every year that follows.

Require gross-up of the base year to full occupancy, exclude capital items and one-time costs, and cap annual growth in controllable operating expenses.

The opex clause defines what the landlord can bill you for. The exclusion list is the battleground: capital expenditures, ownership costs, financing costs, leasing costs, and expenses reimbursed by other parties do not belong on your statement.

Preserve a real audit right: adequate look-back window, choice of auditor, and landlord-paid audit costs when errors exceed a threshold. Then actually audit.

Your exit and your M&A flexibility live here. Consent standards, landlord recapture rights, and profit-sharing on sublease income all determine whether the lease is an asset or an anchor in a transaction.

Carve out change of control, affiliate transfers, and equity financings from consent requirements entirely. A landlord consent right over your Series C is not acceptable.

The subordination, non-disturbance and attornment agreement protects your lease if the landlord's lender forecloses. Without non-disturbance, a foreclosure can wipe out your lease, your buildout, and your TI investment in one filing.

Make lender delivery of an SNDA a condition of subordination, and get it from existing lenders at signing, not as a best-efforts promise.

A narrow use clause freezes your operations at signing. Companies evolve: office becomes lab, lab adds light assembly, assembly adds test. The use clause has to leave room for the company you are becoming.

Draft use broadly, with specific named permissions for foreseeable evolutions like prototyping, light manufacturing, and secure space, and confirm the certificate of occupancy supports them.

Restoration obligations decide what you owe when you leave: removing improvements, specialized installations, cabling, and equipment foundations. Negotiated at exit, this becomes a six or seven figure surprise.

Settle restoration at signing, improvement by improvement. Anything the landlord approves in your plans should be deemed staying property unless flagged for removal in writing at approval.

When the landlord fails to perform, repairs, services, utilities, self-help rights let you fix the problem and offset the cost against rent rather than litigating while your operation suffers.

Define landlord default objectively, with short cure windows for issues that stop your operation. For mission-critical facilities, negotiate rent abatement triggered by service interruption.

You pay rentable square feet but occupy usable square feet, and the load factor between them is set by the landlord's measurement. Remeasurement to a new BOMA standard mid-term can raise rent without moving a wall.

Fix the rentable area in the lease for the full term, verify it independently before signing, and bar remeasurement. On large requirements, a few percent of phantom space is real money.

Estoppel certificates certify lease facts to buyers and lenders. Sign one carelessly and you can waive claims or confirm terms that were still in dispute.

Cap response obligations to a reasonable window, limit certifications to factual matters, and never certify away defaults you have not investigated.

In most U.S. commercial lease transactions the landlord pays the brokerage commission, and it is built into deal economics whether or not you bring a broker. Going unrepresented does not save you money. It leaves the landlord's side of the table fully staffed and yours empty.

Requirement definition, full-market survey including off-market options, structured landlord competition, all-in financial modeling, negotiation of business terms and the lease provisions above, diligence coordination, and transaction management through signature and move-in.

Office: 12 to 24 months before expiration or need date. Industrial, manufacturing, or build-to-suit: 24 to 36 months. Power, permitting, and buildout are the long poles, not the paperwork.

Yes. Multi-market competition is the core of our incentives practice, and the Cushman & Wakefield alliance gives us research and boots on the ground in every major U.S. market.

Yes. Credit gets structured: letters of credit with burndowns, deposit step-downs tied to milestones, good guy guarantees instead of corporate guarantees, and shorter terms with strong options. The structure matters more than the credit score.

Federal leasing runs on solicitation procedures, FAR-based evaluation, and documentation standards that commercial brokers rarely see. DHC holds the VA National Broker Contract and works these acquisitions end to end. See the federal practice.