Negotiating Commercial Leases: How Owners & Corporate Occupants Can Avoid Costly Errors 2010 (Groupcast Location)

Overview

Co-Sponsored by New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education

Why You Should Attend

In one of the most challenging cycles in thirty years, your client or company is relying on you now more than ever to make the best deal. The landscape of the commercial real estate market has changed and so have the rules. It is critical that you understand the hidden costs, shifting of risks and predatory practices of the “killer lease forms” and “sharp” practices. Attend this updated and now two full day program to get up-to-speed on how to negotiate the best terms in today’s economy. This faculty of leading practitioners will give you the tools, insights and advice you need to avoid costly errors or unintended risks and put your client in the most advantageous position.

What You Will Learn

• Update! Insights into commercial leasing in this challenging cycle
• New! Hot topics for Lease Audits
• How to handle fundamental lease theft issues
• New! The latest with regard to “Good-Guy Guaranties” and Lease Takeover Agreements in 2010
• Nuts and bolts of operating expenses
• “Green Leases” - legislation, tax incentives and regulatory entities
• How to plan for the long-term: assignment, subletting and creating flexibility in your lease

• Why the existence of the killer lease?
• New issues facing landlords and tenants in the current retail environment
• Insurance and commercial leases in a troubled economy
• Twelve easy steps to avoid losing your lease
• One full hour of ethical considerations for the real estate leasing attorney

Who Should Attend

Attorneys who practice in the commercial real estate leasing field or are being assigned the facilities responsibilities, and other allied professionals, including real estate brokers, appraisers, property managers, property and REIT investors, facilities directors, fund directors and accountants/auditors.

Special Bonus to all Registrants

All attendees receive a complimentary copy of PLI's comprehensive Course Handbook. This softcover, bound volume was written to augment this program and to stand alone as a permanent reference. PLI's Course Handbooks represent the definitive thinking of the nation's finest legal minds, and are often the standard reference in the field.

PLI Group Discounts

Groups of 4-14 from the same organization, all registering at the same time, for a PLI program scheduled for presentation at the same site, are entitled to receive a group discount. For further discount information, please contact membership@pli.edu or call (800) 260-4PLI.

Cancellations

All cancellations received 3 business days prior to the program will be refunded 100%. If you do not cancel within the allotted time period, payment is due in full. You may substitute another individual to attend the program at any time.

Schedule

Please plan to arrive with enough time to register before the conference begins. A networking breakfast will be available upon your arrival.

Day One: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Morning Session:  9:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

9:00  Why the Existence of the Killer Lease?

• 12 pages become 300 pages - who does this benefit?
• Econometric layering of “theft by lease”
• Current state of the market - leasing resources and tools
• Commercial leasing in a transitional improving market
• Hot topics in Lease Takeover Agreements and loans in 2010
• Fifteen moving lease commencement dates

John Busey Wood

10:00  The Nuts and Bolts of Operating Expenses

• Hidden repair and compliance responsibilities
• Dealing with capital expenditures
• Management fee traps
• The correct gross up procedure
• Negotiating effective audit rights

Michael E. Meyer, John Busey Wood

11:00  Networking Break

11:15  Go Long! Unanticipated Limitations in Long-Term Planning

A. Assignment and Subletting

• Overview
• Permitted transactions
• Recapture rights and profit-sharing
• Recognition agreements and consents
• Structural impediments to assignment and sublease rights

B. Creating Flexibility, Evaluating Your Options and Negotiating the Deal

• How to create flexibility in the lease?
• Renewal and expansion rights, including rights of first refusal, rights of first offer, and fixed expansion rights
• Early termination rights and partial kick outs

Nancy Ann Connery, Michael E. Meyer

12:15  Lunch

Afternoon Session:  1:15 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

1:15  Hot Topics for Dealing with Lease Audits

• Examine how changes to FAS-13 will impact the structure and negotiation of leases and renew the importance of tenant’s audit rights
• Hear how vacancies and historically incorrect gross up adjustments are serving to
  1. overcharge in-place tenants
  2. understate landlord’s NOI
• Learn how “Green Leases” and “Green Buildings” are leading to the development of new profit centers for landlords
• Find out how REITs are shifting corporate office costs to building tenants via allocations at an unprecedented rate. How is this impacting tenants?
• Understand how new insurance products are being used to transform lease structure

• Off balance sheet - springing obligations
• “The gap” period obligations
• Bankruptcy impact
• Backdoor liability accelerations

• Conflicts of interest
• Confidentiality
• Dealing with non-attorneys
• Duties of supervisory and subordinate lawyers
• Hot topics in transactional ethics, etiquette and decorum - how to negotiate?

• Practice tip! High value property - selling pieces of the property
• Hot Topic - later creation of multiple superior interests
• Timeline of creation of interests - impairment of rights
• Options, extensions and later deliveries impaired
• Conversion of lease to condominium ownership
• Purchase extensions and options may not work after conversion
• Loss of lease by condition of Yellowstone injunction

• Costs of litigation and discovery as well as absence of cases or judgments
• Establishing minimum qualifications for arbitrators in arbitration provisions and selection process
• Use of advocate arbitrators - use of 1 neutral or 3 neutrals
• Impairing and invalidating the award
• “Private purchase of the perfect judge”

• Greening the Landlord Tenant Relationship: a partnership for sustainability
• Greening the Leasing Process: from environmental game plan to lease negotiations
• Green Lease Provisions: 10 important provisions to consider
• Green Lease Benefits: opportunities to create value for landlord and tenant
• Where are we today? The status of green leasing

• Use clauses and tradenames
• Exclusive use rights
• Opening and operating covenants
• Co-tenancy rights
• Assignment and subletting
• New issues facing landlords and tenants in the current retail environment

• Effect of the financial crisis on insurance
• Who insures the insurer?
• Coverage of catastrophic risks
• What the landlord needs and what the tenant needs

Faculty

Co-Chair(s)

Speaker(s)

Program Attorney(s)

CLE Credit

Travel Information

New Jersey Groupcast Location

New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education, One Constitution Square, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1520. 732-249-5100.