If your days are spent on behalf of a landlord with (internally or externally) professionally managed properties, then think of a topic you’d like to read about and search for it through Ruminations’ back library of over 400 blog postings. If, however, you have a relationship (even in a mirror) with the owner of a property or two, read on.
Too many times over too many years, our phone has rung with this question: “I have a tenant who is now five months behind, what should I do?” Self-help, even where “lawful,” is illusory. The risk of “doing it wrong” is pretty great and the damages a tenant can rightly claim aren’t pretty. So, we never advise “lock ‘em out.” We get pretty uncomfortable when asked, “Can I cut off the water or the electricity?” If your answer would be “Yes,” stop reading now.
Before we give advice, our reply is: “Have you spoken to your tenant? Is this a case of ‘won’t pay’ or is it ‘can’t pay’?” Far too often, what we hear back is: “No, I haven’t.” In such cases, our advice begins with: “Talk to your tenant.” [Read more…]
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So, the tenant, without the required permission, made significant changes to its space and failed to properly maintain the property as it was required to do. Further, as readers might expect, at the end of the lease’s term, it didn’t return the space to its landlord it the same condition as it was when the lease started. What damages might be available to the landlord?
Can a new landlord sue a tenant for unpaid rent from before closing? Can it evict the tenant based on that unpaid, pre-closing rent? An Illinois appellate court says “No” to each question. And, it awarded attorneys’ fees to the delinquent tenant.
Is there a time to let old things die? We are qualified to answer that question when it comes to matters emotional, but when it comes to “business,” Ruminations only has some thoughts. Today, we’ll discuss chasing people who owe money but, because money isn’t everything, we’ll start with a little digression intended to make a point.
Last week, we set the background for understanding what it means for a broker to be the “efficient producing cause” behind a lease or sale. The background was in the form of a story from a 2012 unpublished New Jersey court decision. The long version can be seen by clicking: 
Take your pick: Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Boulevard (Forest Hills, Queens, New York City), Yellowstone, the TV series, Yellowstone supercomputer, Yellowstone River, Yellowstone (the steamboat), Yellowstone whiskey or Yellowstone injunction. [There are more.] We have picked the injunction. That’s probably no surprise to readers in and around New York, but for others who haven’t yet figured out where this is going, we’ll briefly describe this brand of injunction. We think it is a distinctly New York thing, but even if other places have the same thing under a different name, we think today’s blog posting will make all of us do a little thinking. [That means we are not going to provide any answers today, just questions.] 
Until about a month ago (or, perhaps until this past September), had you asked us if a court would order a tenant to keep its store open and operating, we would have said, “Probably, not,” with an emphasis on the “Not.” We think a large majority of our colleagues would have agreed. That’s not to say that there couldn’t have been very special circumstances not included within our “Not,” but we would have thought those circumstances would need to have been unique in character. Today, after an Indiana court has (for now) barred a chain store retailer from closing 77 stores located in the aggrieved developer’s malls and a Washington state court has (for now) barred a (chain) supermarket from closing a single store, we’re far less sure. We aren’t going to dissect those two court orders today. That’s for next week, another holiday weekend. Today, we’ll just glaze eyes over with some legal background. 
For some reason, it seems that the business of real estate brokerage is subject to a little more scrutiny than experienced by other businesses. For example, there is a common law principle known as the Statute of Frauds. A book could be written about this aspect of the common law and its subsequent incorporation in most state statutes (written law). We won’t write one today.
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