Why we still read the whole lease before a rent review

A rent review clause is agreed at grant and then not looked at again for five years, by which point neither party quite remembers what it says. We read the whole lease before advising on a review, not just the review clause, because assumptions buried in the definitions section, an unusual repairing covenant, or a disregarded improvement can move the figure by a meaningful margin.

The most common error we correct is treating the passing rent on comparable units as the answer rather than the starting point. Comparables need adjusting for incentives, lease length and the condition of the space, and a landlord's agent will rarely volunteer the rent-free period baked into a comparable's headline figure. On a recent 12,000 square foot industrial unit near Junction 26, the first comparable evidence put the review nineteen per cent above passing rent; once we adjusted for a twelve-month incentive on the lead comparable, the settled figure was closer to eleven.