Business lease

About this lease

This lease has been drawn for letting a suite of rooms, or a whole floor, of a multi-tenanted building for business use. The building could be a modern office “block” or a refurbished older building.

Although drawn by reference to office use, the lease can be adapted very easily to any multi let commercial building.

This is a professionally drawn, very comprehensive lease with massive legal protection for the landlord including a long menu of “do’s” and “don’ts”.

This lease is not a compromise between the interests of the parties. It prefers the landlord’s interest. We think that is the best start point. If you wish to make concessions to your tenant, that is fine, but we want you have those choices.

It includes service charge provisions to provide 100% recovery of service costs.

Similar business lease agreements

If you are letting an entire office building to a single tenant, look at Self contained office lease agreement.

If your building is one of several you own on the same estate, look at this lease template. This includes service charge recovery provisions.

Key features

Plain English is used throughout except where it is necessary to use legal terms common in this field of law. The key features of this template can be summarised as:

• standard guarantor
• options for transfer or assignment to another party
• sub-letting forbidden
• option to include a break clause for premature termination by the tenant
• a choice of options for rent reviews
• a draft agreement for a security deposit has also been included

The law in this office lease

Commercial leases differ significantly from residential leases. Residential leases are highly regulated. In contrast, commercial leases are governed chiefly by common law and are very loosely regulated. The rights and obligations of the landlord and tenant are mainly a matter of agreement between the parties. There are no statutory requirements to register your lease, but either party may register a lease of three years or more.

Lease contents

This office lease is comprehensive, providing alternative choices for important decisions.

The contents include 25 provisions and 3 schedules covering:

• rent: period, amount, other payments, interest on overdue rent, periodic review
• condition and repair
• tenant's positive obligations
• restrictions on tenant: prohibited activities on the property
• signs and advertisements
• goods and vehicles
• assignment of the lease
• indemnities by the tenant
• security deposit
• insurance
• access for landlord
• guarantor
• termination: default notice by landlord; provision for premature termination (a break clause)
• forfeiture

Schedule 1: the service charge

Schedule 2: rights reserved

Schedule 3: draft agreement for a security deposit