Lease Administration for an NYC Office Tenant: Who Is Responsible After Signing

The tenant's part: dates, notices and bills

Three duties stay with the company for the whole term, whichever broker and attorney negotiated the lease.

• The dates. Rent commencement, each escalation, the window to use a renewal or termination option, the expiry of a letter of credit, and the end of the term.
• The notices. An option is exercised in writing, sent to the address and by the method the lease names. A notice that goes out late, or to the wrong place, can lose the right.
• The bills. Base rent, escalations and the yearly operating expense statement should each be checked against the lease before they are paid.

A one-page summary of the lease, called an abstract, holds all of this in one place.

Where the broker's responsibilities begin and end

A commercial real estate broker is paid on a transaction, and the work follows that. Before signing, the broker negotiates the economics: the rent, the length of the lease, free months, construction money, security and the options. Those terms decide what there will be to administer later.

After move-in the broker has no daily role in the lease. The role returns as expiry approaches. Twelve to eighteen months out, a market check, a few tours and a real alternative give a tenant something to negotiate with, and renew or relocate explains why that head start matters. On your search, we work for you, and our brokerage page lays out each stage of that work.

The attorney, the landlord's manager and the facilities team

• The attorney reads the lease document, and should be the one to confirm what a clause requires, how a notice must be sent and what to do in a dispute.
• The landlord's property manager works for the owner. That office runs the lobby, the elevators and the base building systems, collects the rent and enforces the building's rules. It sends the bills. It does not check them for you.
• A facilities team works for the tenant inside its own space: cleaning, repairs, maintenance and vendors. Facilities management keeps the office running, which is a different job from keeping the lease.

Lease administration is none of these. It is the paperwork side of occupancy, and it draws on all three.

What one missed date costs

Two dates carry most of the risk. Miss the renewal option window and in most cases the option lapses. You can still ask to renew, but as a tenant with an expiry coming and no right to stay on agreed terms. Remain in the space after the lease ends with no signed extension and you are in holdover, billed under many New York leases at one and a half to two times the last rent.

Smaller misses cost money more quietly. The right to audit an operating expense statement usually expires, sometimes within a year of the statement arriving, so a bill nobody reviewed becomes a bill nobody can contest.