Tenant Form (With Lease: Fill & Download for Free

The Florida Bar has free landlord forms on their site, including a lease - Landlord Tenant Forms

Landlords, particularly large corporate real estate investment companies, are holding out for unicorns — mainly to improve property value for their lenders or to a buyer.(image: Louis Vuitton — they want their property to look like this)(image: a TV prop liquor store — they do not want this)They are hoping for a chain store, hopefully a high class one with Triple-A credit signing a 10–20 year lease that will take good care of the facilities, spend lots of money on improvements, attracts desirable customers, and does not bring noise, disruption, smells, crime, insurance risks, or vermin to the building. It’s worth going without rent for a year or two if you can land a CVS drugstore or Starbucks or Louis Vuitton.You know what’s worse than having an empty building? Having a bad tenant. One that stops paying but takes a year to evict. Or one that causes a fire, or flood, or cockroach infestation.Banks are a primary culprit here. Most real estate is purchased on credit. Lenders, when approving loans and setting interest rates, look at the “rent rolls” — how much gross rent the property is collecting per month — to make sure the borrower is able to service the loan, and by extension, how much money they are willing to lend. They apply a “vacancy factor” to account for the possibility that a tenant will leave and the landlord will have to pay a broker to find a new tenant, and have a period without rent. The vacancy factor, and overall loan score, will be a lot better if there is a long-term lease from a national credit-rated tenant. A buyer, when deciding how much money to offer for a building, will in turn think through how much of a loan the building will support.In fact, there is a form of flipping where a buyer offers a low price for a building that is vacant or has mostly month-to-month commercial tenants, clears out the old businesses, rents to a chain at a higher rate, and then quickly resells the building for more money to a real estate investment company.Around 2002 I was looking to invest about $2 million into a commercial property. My realtor gleefully showed me a bunch of freestanding buildings in strip malls throughout California, these are crappy buildings without much to them but offer very good “cash on cash” rent relative to the purchase price. One of the buildings he showed me was 100% occupied by a… wait for it…(image: Blockbuster Video!)Yes, there was about 12 years left on a 20 year lease, with two ten year extension options. Rent was solid, and Blockbuster’s owners, Viacom, had great credit and paid rent consistently on time. It was a turnkey operation, I didn’t need a property manager, I could just collect my money and visit once a year to make sure it was still there. I’d be set for life, or at least until late middle age.By 2002 it was clear that video rentals were not a stable industry, so I politely declined. Viacom divested itself of Blockbuster in 2004 and the company has since shut down all of its stores. If I had bought this building I would have a vacant unimproved building in a small town strip mall, I’d be lucky to find a pawn shop or discount store to pay 40% lower rent. A lease doesn’t do you any good if the tenant is bankrupt.

Unfortunately this situation is not all that uncommon in NYC.The reality is that you subleased your apartment to others without the written consent of the landlord, which is a violation of your lease. But that is really a moot point, since you would remain responsible for your lease and the apartment even through a legally consented sublease arrangement.As per the terms of your lease, it is your responsibility to pay the rent for the remainder of your lease term and to deliver the apartment to the landlord at the end of the lease in broom-clean condition and free of persons and possessions.In this type of situation, if your landlord is willing to sign a termination and surrender form with you --thereby relieving you of the lease and the burden of evicting the current subtenants/occupants-- in exchange for payment of the remainder of rent due on your lease (which you are obligated to pay anyway), I would take that offer.These things can get very nasty, especially if you are dealing with 'professional' tenants/squatters who know the laws and how to game the system.Good luck.