Practical Legal Tips

Carefully Scrutinize Your Lease Operating Expenses

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I want to remind my readers that you or your clients who lease space may soon be receiving a statement from your landlord regarding operating expenses for the 2009 calendar year. You should carefully scrutinize this statement as landlord's are passing along all kinds of impermissible expenses onto tenants due to the current market. Arnall Golden Gregory is suing their Atlantic Station landlord over this issue for $400,000 so don't put this behavior past any of the landlords even the large institutional ones.

When you receive your bill look for the following that may raise red flags concerning 2009 operating expenses:

• Operating expense figures without any itemization of costs; or
• Operating expense figures with an itemization of costs that when compared to last year may seem much higher or contains many more more or fewer items.

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