You worked hard to negotiate and create your commercial lease agreement. But now you have a tenant who is failing to abide by its terms. What are you going to do?
There are several ways to approach a lease agreement breach. Finding the path forward that’s right for you in your circumstances is the only way to obtain the outcome that best protects your interests.
Your options for dealing with a commercial lease breach
The specific approach that you take may depend in large part on your relationship with the tenant. That said, as you prepare to resolve your commercial lease dispute, here are some steps that you’ll want to take:
- Identity the heart of the dispute, whether it’s something as simple as failure to pay rent or something more complicated like a violation of property use restrictions.
- Gather evidence demonstrating that the lease agreement has been violated, including written correspondences with the tenant, financial records, and summaries of any verbal conversations that you’ve had with the tenant.
- Consider negotiating the dispute informally with the tenant to see if you can find resolution.
- Deliberate on whether cancellation of the lease agreement is proper under the circumstances.
- Think about entering formal mediation to navigate the dispute.
- If you can’t find resolution without court action, then learn how to draft and send the tenant a notice of breach.
- Educate yourself on the legal process pertaining to filing a formal claim.
- Take legal action in your local court system to seek enforcement of the lease agreement.
Properly address your commercial lease dispute
There’s no cookie cutter approach to commercial lease disputes. That’s why you’ll want to carefully assess your situation to ensure that you take the course of action best targeted at protecting your business interests. You’ll be in a better position to do that if you educate yourself as much as possible about the process and find the support that you need to confidently move forward with your case.