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Five Deadly Sins: Lease Clauses a Landlord Should Refuse to Negotiate Under Any Circumstances

By Ira Fierstein and J. Kelly Bufton
August 01, 2003

When a landlord or its attorney prepares an initial draft of a lease on the landlord's form, it is expected that the tenant will simply sign the lease (but only if the tenant believes it has no leverage whatsoever), return the lease with handwritten comments, or, if the tenant's comments are extensive and it has taken control of the drafting process, return a black-lined copy of the lease that it has revised. What then begins is the long exercise of lease negotiation, where each side asserts its best positions with the hope of ending up with a lease with which each side can live. There are, however, five provisions the landlord and its attorney should not agree to modify. Such modification is tantamount to the commission of a deadly leasing sin. Here are the subject matters and sample lease provisions that should not be touched:

1. Hazardous Materials:

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