A lease is perhaps one of the most crucial documents a dentist can ever sign. Unless you own property, the lease expense is maybe the second largest expense of any dental office after payroll.
While dentists can spend a considerable amount of resources and time looking for the best location to practice, they sometimes spend little time reading and negotiating a lease provision. Remember a lease is there to protect the landlord’s investment. This article explains what you need to know about dental office leases.
A team
It’s always a good idea to find someone like Dental Office Rentals – HPRG who can get and interpret current and projected dentist-to-population data, vacancies in the area, projected growth, and other relevant information. When you find the proper location, a well-connected advisor who has relationships with local people and experience working with other dentists can be key to negotiating good contract terms.
Keep in mind that landlords can usually soften the deal, though they need to be asked. Therefore, you must find the right tenant representative or lease negotiator to negotiate a great economic deal.
However, you need to be careful because the fee for the tenant representative is usually paid by the landlord after signing the lease. As you can see, this is appealing to any dentist, but you need to make sure that the tenant representative is impartial. You need to find someone you can trust without questioning their dedication and motives when it comes to protecting your best interests.
Proposal letter
Before you decide to negotiate and sign a lease, you need to sign a proposal letter or a nonbinding term sheet to make sure that you and the landlord agree on the terms. This letter needs to include the key elements of the agreement. While this letter is usually non binding, rarely can a landlord agree to later concessions that are not already in the letter.
On the other hand, when you try to buy a dental practice, you may assume a current lease and cannot have the opportunity to negotiate a new lease. But if you agree to stay in the property for quite long, the landlord can sometimes give you friendlier terms.
Checklist
No doubt, you need to have a checklist to make sure that you are getting the best lease agreement. One of the important elements you need to figure out is the cost of renting the property.
It’s worth noting that many leases are considered to be triple net. This means you can pay for insurance, taxes, and maintenance expenses. Your landlord can sometimes agree to pay a certain amount of the taxes, but you may have to pay for the pro-rata portion if there is an increase in the base amount.
If the dental office happens to be in a condominium, you may also have to pay the pro-rata portion of the property maintenance. Also, it’s important to check the increase in rental each year based on a set amount or inflation.
Interesting Related Article: “What Does Total Fixed Cost Lease Mean?“