The Commercial Estates Desk

You could have walked away last March. Nobody noticed, so you’re here for another five years.

Most commercial leases have one date where you’re allowed to hand the place back early. It needs notice months in advance, it comes with conditions, and if nobody is watching the diary it simply goes past.

Your landlord pays someone to know exactly what your lease says. You’ve got a copy in a drawer somewhere. So when the one date you could have used comes round, the only person in the room who knows about it is the one who benefits from you missing it. Nothing happens, nobody writes to you, and the lease quietly rolls on for the rest of its term.

Even the people who know their date get caught, because nearly every one of them comes with a list of things you have to do first. Left a stud wall up that you put in? Doesn’t count. Paid the rent a day late? Doesn’t count. The lease just carries on as if you never tried, and you usually find out months later when there’s nothing to be done about it.

And whenever you do eventually leave, there’s a second bill waiting. Your landlord can charge you to put the building back how it was — a figure most companies have never seen coming and have put nothing aside for. It lands weeks after you’ve handed the keys over, when you’ve got nothing left to negotiate with.

Where the money goes

You sign Ten or fifteen years, agreed in an afternoon.

You could leave One date, notice months ahead, conditions attached. Miss it and you’re in for the rest.

Lease ends You move out and hand the keys back.

The bill Arrives weeks later. Nothing left to negotiate with.

None of these dates move

Spot something eighteen months out and you’ve got a decision to make. Spot it three months out and you’re scrambling. Spot it afterwards and it’s five more years of rent. The only thing that makes any of it fixable is finding it early, which is the whole reason to look now rather than when the date has already gone.

What we do

Send us your leases and we’ll read them properly — all of them. You get one document back, in plain English: every date that matters, what you have to do before each one, what it’s likely to cost you, and what needs deciding over the next two years, most important first.

£950 for up to three leases. £225 for each extra one.

Set that against five more years of rent on somewhere you’d have left, and a repair bill at the end that usually runs into tens of thousands. Three weeks from you sending them over to you having the answer.

We’re not surveyors, and we’ll tell you when you need one

We do the property side for companies too small to employ someone to do it. If something needs a proper surveyor or a solicitor, we’ll say so, get the right one in, and make sure they’re asked the right question. Knowing when you need one, and what to ask them for, is most of the job.

Tell us how many places you rent

Twenty minutes on the phone, no charge, and we’ll tell you where you’re most likely to get caught.