While the lease usually deals with the default of the tenant in any minor event, most landlord default provisions are limited to major financial default.Evaluate the stability or viability of the landlord as part of your work. For years the paradigm was to treat the tenant on the same financial scale as a consumer, determining credit worthiness, running D&B's, checking on the personal financial situation of the tenant, even hand wringing over the nature of the business of the tenant. While the landlord is certainly due some comfort of your ability to meet your rent, if there is one thing the last decade has taught us is that the landlord must also be scrutinized as to its financial viability and management style.
Talk with other tenants in the building.If the landlord loses the building to foreclosure or the ownership, in whatever form, files for bankruptcy, your hard fought-for rights could go up in smoke. Never mind the grass not getting cut, how about having your lease terms invalidated with no recourse. The landlord boiler plate lease invariable contains two good clauses for them: “Tenant's Default”, and “Landlord's Remedies to Tenant's Default”. Oh they're great, you step out of line for a second and you'll be grabbed by the back of the neck like a school yard bully. But rarely do these leases contain provision for the Landlord's Default or Remedies to the Tenant for the Landlord's Default. Even a noted legal eagle who wrote a book for almost every clause to be put into an office lease failed to even mention the prospect of landlord default. The court house (and the court house steps) are full of cases where the landlord got into trouble.While it is likely that a new owner will step in or a bank or court will appoint a trustee, and the light bill will be paid and the grass cut, but what about your renewal option, what about the $40,000 security deposit, what about the commitment the landlord gave you that you could have 15 reserved parking spaces or the expansion area or what about the cancellation clause you successfully negotiated and need in order to move to Texas. That will make you wake up at 3:00AM.For landlord default provisions, the simplest manner is to convert all the preexisting tenant default language to being mutual for the landlord. Always seek and take the advice of an attorney in accomplishing this.
