Maintenance.

In most cases you will occupy a commercial property on a FRI Tenancy (Full Repair and Insurance) and will be expected to maintain the property to a standard specified within the lease. You are strongly advised to inspect the premises for defects and features with associated high maintenance costs.

Ask the landlord to repair any items of disrepair. Should the landlord decline to undertake this work you should have any defects noted in the lease and expressly excluded from your liabilities of repair at the end of your tenancy.

Take time to prepare any list of defects properly, vague descriptions of disrepair should be avoided. Your landlord may be unwilling to note some disrepair in the lease if it is likely to overlap general repairing covenants such as external decorations.

You should make sure that you fully understand the implications of such disrepair that is not noted in a lease .

More On Maintenance.

You may be asked to pay service charges in place of or as well as your repairing covenants, the issue of service charges is too wide a subject for this guide to cover all the implications of them.

A solicitor should make enquiries about service charges and be able to advise you about your responsibilities and the costs involved, but it is important that you enquire yourself and have  a good understanding of any service charges there might be, particularly during the early stages of looking for and comparing properties

Take time to find out the extents of the property you are considering leasing, you may be required to maintain parts of the property you had not considered, ask about liability for such items as boundary features, sewers, underground water and electricity cables.