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I am stuck in a commercial lease which has 9 years to run i cnat afford the payment but own my house if i walk?
away and dont pay what can the landlord do
Public Comments
- Take you to court for all money owed.
- Anybody go guarantee for the lease - they go there 1st. They will chase you in the courts if not.
- The best solution is to approach the landlord and offer to pay 3 months rent to break the lease. The lease must have a clause in it that requires the landlord to make his best effort to find a replacement tenant to minimize your liability for future lease payment obligations. In these tough times, it might be possible that the landlord will demand 6 months of lease payments to break the lease. In any case, the landlord will be weighing his litigation costs against the loss of income from not having a new tenant. Good luck!
- They will sue you for the remaining lease payments. On a 9 year lease, this could be a substantial amount of money. They can't exactly take your house, but if they win in court what they CAN do is to get a judgment, then file an Abstract of Judgment which will create a lien on all the property you owe (at least this is true in California--other states may be different). This is good for 10 years and can be renewed for another 10. They can't force you to sell your house to pay it off though, and they do have a duty to mitigate their damages by re-leasing the property. In these down times they might have trouble. And if they have to lease it for less than what you were leasing it for, you would still owe the difference. I'm tempted to ask why on earth you signed such a long lease, but at this point what's done is done and it doesn't really matter. You would be wise to talk to your landlord rather than "walk". Maybe they will work with you to lower the payments to something you can afford rather than take the chance on you defaulting altogether. I wish you good luck, hope it works out ok.
- If you are in the UK and have a Commercial Lease this would be for a business. You are stuck with it until the end of term. If you have a viable business then sell the business and the lease. You will be chased by the Landlord for non payment and he will put a charge on your house. You need legal advice.
