Desconstructing the COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE LEASE

There are a wide variety of commercial real estate ("CRE") lease types and structures present in today's marketplace, while the terminology and vernacular used to classify them can be extremely confusing.  But, regardless of the lease types that will be subsequently presented, there are three things that all CRE lease structures have in common:

1. They are based on the property type, which also depends to some degree on;
2. the market or sub-market that a particular property is located within, and;
3. "who" pays for "what" operating and ownership expenses associated with a particular property.

Over time, and as CRE leases have become inherently more complex, these lease structures have been bestowed certain industry-accepted ‘labels’ - the problem is that these ‘labels’ mean different things to different people in different markets.