Page 28 - Bulletin Vol 27 No 2 - May - Aug. 2022 FINAL

Financial Article |Lease Negotiations

analogy is to encourage you as a tenant to protect your interests. Know who you’re dealing with in a
negotiation and don’t be naive. If you understand what’s at stake and who you’re dealing with, you can
arm yourself with a smart strategy.

COMMON ATTEMPTS TO INTIMIDATE

Your opposition in a lease negotiation may employ tactics to intimidate you. Beware! Below are three
of the most common tactics:
1. “Always” and “Never” Statements
A common approach to intimidate a tenant into submission is to make “always” or “never” claims.
These should be challenged, if for no other reason than that there’s a first time for everything. Landlords
make their own rules, and they can break them. Statements such as, “We never do that for any tenant,”
“We nev-er lower lease rates on a renewal,” “We never give anyone free rent,” and so on, should not be
taken as immutable truths. These are arbitrary positions aimed at deceiving you.
2. Relationship Manipulation
Landlords strive to become patrons, clients, or patients of their commercial tenants. It provides them an
obvious reason to support their tenant’s success, frequently visit and inspect their properties, and most
crit-ical to their own success, to blur the lines of whose side they’re really on when a lease is negotiated.
This is often labeled as a friendship, and it very well may be on some level. However, most business
friendships, and specifically landlord-tenant friendships, are those of utility. Do not be lured into a trap
of “friendship”. A relationship between a landlord and a tenant becomes prohibitive and costly when
the tenant assumes they’re going to achieve better terms because of it and otherwise forgoes a smart
and protected negotiation strategy.
3. Exclusion of Brokers
Most landlords in a lease renewal negotiation will say they don’t work with brokers. “You have to
negotiate with us yourself,” they’ll say. And why wouldn’t they try this? A tenant represented by a
broker is a game changer for the landlord. It means they’re going to have to sharpen their pencils and
likely offer much more competitive terms than they would have had to offer if the tenant were negoti-
ating with them directly. By saying this, the landlord hopes that his or her tenant will be too uncomfort-
able to bring in an expert advisor who can show what other properties are willing to offer, what it looks
like to achieve the most favorable terms and, most importantly, how to avoid being taken advantage of.

For the landlord, the benefit of leveraging any of these tactics is obvious: making money. So, it’s not
hard to understand why landlords do what they do. They are professionals who make their living
through being better prepared than their tenants and they play to win! Now that you’re aware of some
of the intimidation tactics landlords might employ, you can come to the negotiation table armed with
your best possible strategy, including representation by an expert healthcare real estate agent.

CARR is the nation’s leading provider of commercial real estate services for healthcare tenants and
buyers. Every year, thousands of healthcare practices trust CARR to achieve the most favorable terms
on their lease and purchase negotiations. CARR’s team of experts assist with start-ups, lease renewals,
expansions, relocations, additional offices, purchases, and practice transitions. Healthcare practices
choose CARR to save them a substantial amount of time and money; while ensuring their interests are
always first. Evan Gasman can be reached at 917-592-3196 or evan.gasman@carr.us

28| Nassau County Dental Society ⬧ www.nassaudental.org