Wednesday August 27, 2008 at 3:21pm
Many tenants sign up to leases which include a service charge but most don't appreciate the extent to which they are effectively signing a blank cheque. A typical service charge provision will entitle the landlord or a separate management company to provide a range of services to tenants in a building. The landlord then recharges the cost of providing those services to the tenants. Individual tenants will be obliged to either contribute a fixed percentage of those costs or a 'fair' proportion (o....
(read more...)Friday August 22, 2008 at 4:14pm
Since 1 April this year owners of industrial and warehouse premises must pay full business rates on premises once they have been empty for six months. For owners of offices and retail property the liability comes in after the premises have been empty for only three months. Clearly this could be an enormous expense for a commercial landlord with a number of empty properties. Anecdotally, I have heard in my area that landlords are slashing rents on empty premises just to get them occupied to avoid....
(read more...)Wednesday August 20, 2008 at 4:17pm
The law is littered with terms that tend to only mean something to lawyers and other professionals. Dilapidations is a term every landlord and tenant of commercial premises needs to understand. All leases have obligations on a tenant to keep a property in a certain state of repair and decoration and dilapidations refers to a state of repair and decorative order that falls below the level required by the lease. The first time a tenant tends to hear the term dilapidations is when it receives a sch....
(read more...)Monday August 18, 2008 at 4:19pm
It's been pretty commonplace over the last ten years for people to sell off part of their back garden to a property developer. With the construction of new homes effectively mothballed at the moment, you might be forgiven for thinking that you've missed the boat if you are keen to sell off some surplus garden land. The good news is that developers specialising in certain types of property are still in the market for land and one such area is bungalows. This market is holding up rather better tha....
(read more...)Wednesday August 13, 2008 at 4:24pm
Many legal documents contain provisions that require one party to serve notice on the other. This can sometimes trigger the next stage of a transaction or possibly the termination of the contract. Whatever the reason, serving notices is an absolute minefield with a huge body of caselaw establishing how and when notices must be served. In addition to the weight of caselaw, the agreements themselves often have detailed provisions setting out what constitutes valid service of a notice. This can som....
(read more...)Monday August 11, 2008 at 4:27pm
No, it's not a lease printed on green paper or a lease of that bit of land in the middle of a village where we are all supposed to be able to graze our sheep. A green lease is one that includes obligations on the landlord and tenant to achieve targets for energy consumption. Perhaps surprisingly, green leases are thought to have originated in Australia. The Australian Government Solicitor prepared a template lease for use in lease transactions involving government agencies or bodies. The key ele....
(read more...)Thursday August 7, 2008 at 4:30pm
We all know that land transactions are potentially liable to Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) but did you know that, in certain circumstances, SDLT can be charged on some or all of the goodwill of a business? This is what the HMRC manual says on the subject of SDLT: Stamp duty land tax is a charge on transactions in 'land'. Thus the subject-matter of the charge includes anything forming part of the land as a matter of law, such as buildings and structures forming part of the land, and fixtures. This m....
(read more...)Tuesday August 5, 2008 at 4:33pm
As if there weren't enough issues to worry about when you're buying a business, a recently decided case has given business purchasers another headache. The case was Sodexho Ltd v Gutridge and others. The decision in this case was that where an employer fails to give equal pay then a contractual liability exists in respect of those employees to whom the failure relates, even before any action has been taken to determine the existence of the pay inequality. The ramifications for anyone buying a bu....
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