How to Negotiate Your Commercial Lease Agreement in Times of Crisis — Brady McGuinness

Brady McGuinness has been providing legal, management, and consulting services for businesses in California for over 25 years. Currently, he works with commercial real estate landlords and tenants and helps them arrange a fair leasing agreement. Because of COVID-19, Brady offers advice on what tenants and business owners can do with their commercial lease and how they can navigate paying less rent for the time being.

Highlights:

• Is there COVID-19 legislation that can affect commercial tenancy in California?
• Take a look at your lease and see what it says if there is an interruption of business or a force majeure event.
• How can you talk to your landlord about not being able to cover rent?
• Can you legally ask for rent abatement or some kind of rent forgiveness during this time?
• It’s critical to make your requests reasonable and to work with your landlord.
• The Paycheck Protection Program can help you with rent costs.
• Check with your insurance broker on the types of insurance that are available to you.
• Now is the time to get creative with percentage rent or extending the lease term.
• Reserve your claims, even if you’re denied, because it may turn out you’ll be getting more coverage than you think later down the line for business interruption.

Resources:

Suttonhague.com

Calnevalaw.com

Mcguinnessesq.com