Hello , me and a friend purchased a retail business about 3 months ago.
The person we purchased the business from had a 4 page tenant friendly lease , we recently asked the landlord to transfer the lease to our name and after four weeks of back and forth he gives us a 17 page lease which I know is standard but there are certain provisions that are scaring us.

My question is can I refuse to sign the lease he is offering us ? The new lease is the same amount of rent and years left on the lease as the old lease . Only thing added are provisions that are heavily favored towards the landlord

A bit more info which I think is relevant

* We are currently paying about 50% of what the market value of our location is so it's in his best interest yo have us leave
*landlord has repeatedly suggested cutting our store in half to turn it into 2 units
*landlord recently accused us of stealing electricity which is a felony and he was proved wrong (this woulda have been grounds for a lease termination)

we are very paranoid that he would try to pull a fast one on us and gain leverage and try to force us out


My question is can we continue operating our business with the old lease with the old business owner's name on the lease and ignoring the new landlord? Perhaps have the old owner just issue us a sublease (there's no provisions in the old lease that prohibits subleases)

I know almost nothing about commercial leases. Isn't the lease in the businesses name? Why do you need a new lease?

Obviously given the situation the landlord wants you out. He has no incentive to do business with you in good faith or attempt to keep the relationship up. This means you need to leave the lease as is unless that isn't legally an option.

If you actually need a new lease with him for some reason you're ****ed. Like really sincerely he's already accused you of power theft. His viewpoint on the whole thing is painfully clear.

See a lawyer immediately. No one here can help you. If you don't need to transfer the lease via the landlord then don't. You should be able to continue under the old terms. You can probably pressure the person who sold the business to sublease if they don't do it willingly, to avoid signing a new one. It all depends on your jurisdiction and the fine print.

^ Yeah that's the right call. I should have finished my post with 'lawyer up' because this is obviously one of those situations.

You left out jurisdiction, the single most important detail.

Sorry
This is in new York state
Old lease is in a personal name under the old business owner name
we want to put the new lease in a corporation name

This is something I'd charge, like, $300 bucks to answer. Just go to a lawyer dude. It's the tiniest of business expenses and this can get solved in 30 minutes.

Didn't see the points about him trying to evict you. Get a lawyer. Document everything. Only communicate through writing. Usually sale of a business is contingent on leasing transfers but if sale already went through owner probably won't be as much help as you expect.... he essentially takes risk of your default by leaving contracts in his name. If sale hasn't gone through draft lease agreement that is agreeable concurrently with sale agreement and tie the two then landlord is irrelevant.

Lawyer up obv.

+9 to the rest of the lawyer up's

Also, start looking at a different space and/or factoring in what's going to happen to your business when the current lease is up. Because you're either getting punted or paying more rent where you are.

hahahahahhahah

good luck.

All right, I've got to ask: You didn't use a lawyer when you made the purchase? Bec this right here is supposed to be taken care of before you buy. If you didn't use a lawyer you're going to need one now and gl to you bec what you can and can't do is likely in the old lease and you'll be stuck w/ it.

Btw, forget about asking the seller to sign a sublease. If I were that person I'd say 'why should I, the deal's done.'

Okay so we had lawyer look at it and they recommended that we stick with the old lease .
We 're fine operating with the old lease so we may just stay put for now or just do a sublease the seller is more then happy to do a sublease .

Ps. Our old lease has no provisions that restrict subleases . Only thing is the landlord has to approve the new tenant and we have documentation that he approved us via email and text . We used a lawyer for the bill of sale etc....
So it looks like we just do a sublease to ourselves to our new corporation since we purchased the business from old owner and have all rights etc... to the business unless our lawyer is clueless

just how things work. if you are paying less than market rent the landlord will want to raise the rent or boot you and rent to someone else. he may have to honor the old lease but can make it rough on you.
get to know him and learn his feelings on things. that goes a long way.