Renting Commercial property is confusing to many people and the consequences of not understanding it can be very expense.
The Residential Tenancies Act doesn’t generally apply to Commercial Property. This means that the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal doesn’t deal with Commercial Leases and those lengthy delays you’re reading about are not going to apply to Commercial Leases.
An Offer to Lease often is the start of a Commercial Lease. Have a lawyer review it before you sign it and yes, that even applies if you’re using a realtor. The reason for this is that an Offer to Lease has binding terms in it and if you’ve agreed to something, there is little we can do to get you out of it without the agreement from the other side.
Another thing to keep in mind is that even if the Offer says that a “head lease” will be entered into, but it isn’t the terms in the Offer end up being the terms of the lease, so you’re stuck with them without any further information about them. This matters.
Too often lately a client has come to us with a bad offer that they’re stuck with. The legal fees and moving fees that end up being incurred could all have been prevented had they used a lawyer first. Yes, lawyers cost money, but its cheaper to use us before you sign something that to use us to litigate that something you signed.
Inga B. Andriessen, Principal Lawyer