251-217-9733
Commercial Real Estate and Property Counsel
Leases, purchases, development, and the disputes that come with all three.
Commercial Property Work, Start to Finish
Commercial real estate work covers the acquisition, leasing, development, financing, and disposal of property used for business (along with the disputes that arise from any of them).
It differs from residential work in one important respect: almost everything is negotiable. A residential lease is largely a form. A commercial lease is a substantial commercial agreement in which the allocation of maintenance, insurance, taxes, improvement costs, renewal rights, and termination rights is genuinely up for discussion, and a tenant who signs the landlord's draft unamended has usually accepted every one of those on the landlord's terms.
The same is true of purchase agreements, development documents, and financing. What gets negotiated is what gets protected.
What We Handle
Commercial leases
Negotiating and drafting for landlords and tenants, including the operating expense, maintenance, and renewal terms that decide the real cost.
Purchases and sales
Contracts, due diligence, title, survey, closing, and the conditions that let you walk away if something turns up.
Build-to-suit and ground leases
Long-term arrangements where construction, financing, and occupancy obligations all interact.
Subleases and assignments
Including the consent provisions that decide whether you can exit a space you no longer need.
Title and survey review
Easements, encroachments, restrictions, and the things a title commitment reveals that nobody reads.
Zoning and land use
Permitted use, variances, planning approvals, and development entitlements.
Environmental due diligence
Coordinating and reviewing environmental assessments as part of a transaction.
Development
Project structuring, entitlements, and coordination among lenders, contractors, and municipalities.
Landlord-tenant disputes
Defaults, collections, evictions, and the disputes that follow a lease nobody read closely.
Refinancing
Loan documents, security instruments, and coordination among banks and transaction parties.
Sound familiar?
How We Approach It
Read it as a commercial agreement
A lease is not a formality, it is a multi-year financial commitment with an allocation of risk inside it. We read it that way and tell you what the real cost is, not the headline rent.
Coordinate the whole transaction
Property deals involve lenders, brokers, title companies, surveyors, contractors, and sometimes a municipality. Someone has to hold the sequence together, usually that is us.
Draft for the exit
Assignment, sublease, early termination, and renewal rights matter most at the moment your business changes, which is exactly when nobody thought to negotiate them.
Who Does This Work
Benjamin H. Kilborn, Jr.
Multimillion-dollar real estate acquisitions and development projects from concept through permitting, plus public-private partnerships and economic development incentives.
Jordan W Gerheim
Landlord and tenant matters, collections and evictions, planning and zoning, development, and refinancing coordination.
Robert J. Riccio
The tax side of property transactions, including structuring and the treatment that follows from it.
Seven Things to Check Before You Sign a Commercial Lease
What the rent actually is
Base rent is rarely the whole number. Operating expenses, taxes, insurance, and common area charges can add substantially, and how they are calculated is negotiable.
Who maintains what
Roof, HVAC, structure, and parking. A full-service lease and a triple-net lease at the same headline rent are very different deals.
Renewal and escalation
How much the rent rises, when, and whether you have an option to renew at all. A business that improves a space and then has no renewal right has built equity for a landlord.
Assignment and sublease
What happens if you outgrow the space, sell the business, or need out. Consent provisions decide whether you have options or not.
Personal guarantees
Whether you are signing personally, for how long, and whether it can burn off over time. Frequently negotiable and rarely negotiated.
Improvement allowance
Who pays for the build-out, who owns it afterwards, and what has to be restored when you leave.
Default and cure
What counts as a default, how much notice you get, and how long you have to fix it before the landlord can act.
How This Work Is Billed
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Related Services
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I have a lawyer review a commercial lease?
Yes, and it is one of the clearest cost-benefit cases in business law. A commercial lease is usually a multi-year obligation worth six or seven figures in total, drafted by the landlord's lawyer, and presented as standard. It is not standard. It is a starting position. A few hours of review routinely changes terms worth far more than the review costs.
What is the difference between a triple-net lease and a full-service lease?
Who pays for the property. Under a triple-net lease the tenant pays taxes, insurance, and maintenance in addition to rent; under a full-service lease the landlord covers them out of the rent. Two leases with identical base rent can therefore differ enormously in real cost, and comparing offers without accounting for it is comparing the wrong numbers.
Do I have to sign a personal guarantee?
Often the landlord will ask, particularly for a newer business. It is more negotiable than most tenants realize. The amount can be capped, the term limited, and the guarantee structured to reduce or expire once you have paid reliably for a period. The first draft will rarely include any of that.
We need out of our lease early. What are the options?
It depends on what you negotiated. Assignment, sublease, an early termination right, or a negotiated surrender are the usual routes, and which are available comes down to the consent provisions in the document. This is the clearest example of why exit terms matter at signing. The tenant who negotiated them has options, and the one who did not is asking for a favor.
Do you handle residential closings?
No. Our real estate work is commercial and business-related (leases, acquisitions, development, and the disputes arising from them). For a residential transaction we will point you to someone who does that work properly.
Send Us the Lease Before You Sign It
Book a Risk-Free Strategy Session and send the document ahead. We will have read it before we speak and tell you what is worth negotiating.