Commercial lease review: the clauses that decide everything.
A commercial lease is the longest contract most small businesses ever sign, and the most asymmetric: the landlord's solicitor drafted it, and every silence favours their client. A review is not proofreading; it is finding the five clauses that will cost you money in year three.
Repair: the most expensive word is 'keep'
An obligation to 'keep the premises in repair' can mean putting them into a better state than you found them. On an older unit that is a five-figure exposure at exit. The fix is a schedule of condition and drafting that limits repair to that recorded state.
Break clauses that actually work
Break rights are routinely drafted to fail: conditions on vacant possession, on absolute compliance with covenants, on payments you did not know were due. A break you cannot lawfully exercise is decoration. The review tests the conditions against reality.
Rent review, alienation, guarantees
Upward-only reviews, assignment and subletting restrictions, and personal guarantees are where flexibility and personal risk hide. If a guarantee is demanded, the terms matter enormously, and if a lender is involved you may need independent legal advice on it, which we also provide.
What a fixed fee review covers
Our lease review from £750, no VAT, delivers a written report on exactly these points with negotiation recommendations, in days, not weeks. Heads of terms review from £450 catches problems even earlier, before the drafts exist.
Every matter above is delivered at a fixed fee agreed in writing before you pay, with a written reply within 24 hours. Send your enquiry.