I’m trying to rent an office for my company, and now that the main terms (rent amount, deposit, start date) have been determined, the agent has sent over the actual contract to be signed.
As can be expected, it is incredibly one sided with all terms favoring the owner, though we are always told the terms are “standard” and I do believe them when they say any other place will have the same one sided terms as this one.
That being said a few things strike me as they could potential open up unlimited financial liability:
– requirement to hire a cleaning company of owner’s choosing, presumably regardless of cost
– requirement to restore the office to its initial state, using a company of the owner’s choosing, again presumably regardless of cost (restoring is explicitly defined as full change of carpet, full painting of walls and ceiling, basically everything brand new etc regardless of the state of the office)
– same thing for any internal works such as installing partitions etc.
Now does this mean that if the contractor chosen by the owner decides to bill me double or triple the normal cost for restoring the office upon leaving, I am forced to pay regardless?
Could the contractor legally be paying kickbacks to the owner as “introduction fee”?
This feels like it could end up being legal extorsion.
Of course the common answer on Reddit is “if you don’t like it find another place” but as mentioned above, these terms are standard so all offices will have similar terms.
Also consumer protections that apply to residential homes (depreciation borne by owner etc.) do not apply in this B2B setting.
So I’m looking for people who have successfully negotiated modifying the contract to more reasonable and fair terms (what kind of wording would satisfy the owner while preventing potential extorsion?) or successfully fought an excessive bill in this kind of situation, to get an idea of what can be done here or how much I risk losing when moving out…
Any advice is appreciated.
3 comments
At the risk of sounding like a typical jlifer, isn’t this an area where you should perhaps hire expert legal counsel?
This is pretty normal for giant office towers managed by Mori, Mitsui type of massive development companies. Their arguments are that they only have a few approved contractors and vendors that know how to “work” in the building. And they don’t want to spend a week coaching the cheap vendor on doing a good job restoring and cleaning the area you are renting out. I don’t know who your renting from but good luck fighting them. Try to remember you are renting a space for a few years from them and they are not going to risk their multi million dollar asset for a few years of rent from you.
As makoto144 says, those terms are typical for decent office spaces.
Why do they want your cleaners handling the trash the wrong way or your “cheapest available” contractor drilling though a pipe.
If it’s some shit house of an office and you can take the trash to the collection area yourself tell them to get fucked on the cleaning.
Same for the other two but expect to get knocked back.
If they agree to all changes then they will have other things in the contract to fuck you with.
I’ve been dragged into lease negotiations for 20 years and still fucking hate it. It took me 10 years to get a key in one case…
For their contractor they’ll need to price “reasonably” as there are other tennants. but it will be bat shit crazy all the same.
Best thing is to find a place you need to make zero changes to.
Reinstatement will be putting it back to exactly how you found it. Plaster over any holes, painting, replace flooring (as agreed) blah blah. I’ve budgeted 3.5 mil to reinstate a 50坪 floor but we have a few ceiling height partitions to remove..