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A few words here and there can have a big impact on how your lease impacts your business. Paying close attention to these four lease terms and the way that they are drafted can help you keep your good spaces and get out of your bad ones before they start to harm your bottom line and your success.

Renewal Options

In a space that works well for your business, you could argue that the most important lease terms are those that define your renewal options. Having the ability to renew your space without having to compete or renegotiate gives you some of the stability of ownership with all of the flexibility of leasing. The best renewal options have fixed rent increases. If you have already negotiated that your rent will go up 5 , 10 or 15 percent when you take a new option, you end up with two choices.

1. If the market rent is higher, you take the option and enjoy lower-than-market rent for the entire option period.
   
   

2. If the market rent is lower, you let your landlord know that you'd be willing to stay but that you will only re-up at 95 percent of market. He'll thank you since you saved him from having vacancy and having to pay commissions and tenant improvements for a new tenant.
   
   

Either way, you win.

Subletting and Assignment

When things don't work out, it's important to have a way to get out of your lease. Generally, buyout clauses won't be that generous since the landlord will want to be able to count on the income that you originally promised. As such, the more important lease terms are those that deal with assignment and subletting. The more rights that you can get to to turn your space over to someone else, the better.

Although a lease that grants an unlimited right to assign your responsibilities and completely get off the hood is going to be hard to negotiate, getting the right to sublease your space with little interference from the landlord is important. If possible, try to get the right to keep your options if you vacate. That way, you can offer long-term subleases and potentially attract more tenants including those that would be shopping for your space if it came available as direct lease space.

Rules and Breaches

Pay careful attention to all of the lease terms that define the building's rules and its requirements. These terms can determine whether or not a competitor can come in next door to you, what types of businesses can share the building (does your accounting firm want to be next to a dental practice?), and how parking gets divvied up. While some building rules might limit your options, they also help to keep your co-tenants in check.

Along with the rules, read the lease terms that define landlord breaches carefully. Having the ability to withhold rent can be a valuable option if the landlord isn't enforcing the rules. On the other hand, the right to cancel your lease in the event of a landlord breach might not be as valuable since he might want you out of the building to accommodate a different tenant.

Signage Rights

While the building's overall rules impact your tenancy, its signage impacts your brand. For better or for worse, the names on your building affect your employees', vendors' and clients' impression of you. Getting signage rights of your own is great but, barring that, confirming that the management can't just slap any name on the building, can turn out to be just about as valuable. 

View some other Commercial Lease Term articles:

5 Office Lease Terms to Watch For

Lease Terms That Give You Options

7 Lease Terms that Can Protect You from a Troublesome Landlord

If your corporate real estate strategy includes owning properties rather than leasing them, you end up walking a bit of a tightrope. Done right, you can enjoy greater control and lower costs over time. Done wrong, you can end up with thousands or millions of wasted square feet. Here are five strategies that can help you optimize your owned-property strategy.

REoptimizer® client and Lake Success-based, Dealertrack Technologies, will soon expand to a yet-to-be-built 233,000-square-foot headquarters on 9 acres in North Hills, and promises to add more than 350 new jobs to the 500 or so employees it already has here.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The company, which provides data access and inventory management software for automotive dealers, had kicked the tires of sites in five states, as well as a few other locations nearby, including the space that Canon USA vacated in the spring of 2013, but ultimately decided to have a building designed for them built from scratch, according to industry sources.

The new environmentally-friendly, LEED-certified building planned for 3400 New Hyde Park Road is about one mile from DealerTrack’s current Lake Success headquarters and should be ready in early 2016, according to a company statement. The site is vacant land owned by Castagna Realty, which also owns the Americana shopping center in Manhasset. The new building was designed by The Spector Group in Woodbury, and will be built by a partnership between Castagna and East Setauket-based Tritec Development.

In order to keep DealerTrack and its expansion on Long Island, Empire State Development has committed a total of up to $12 million in performance-based incentives – $10.5 million in tax credits through the Excelsior Jobs Program and a $1.5-million capital grant – both of which are tied directly to job creation and investment commitments, including more than 350 net new jobs, the retention of more than 500 current jobs and additional capital investment, according to an ESD statement. The Nassau County Industrial Development Agency is expected to provide property tax and sales tax abatements as well.

“We’re talking to them,” said Joseph Kearney, who heads the Nassau IDA.

Don Catalano, of iOptimize Realty®, represented DealerTrack in the transaction. Ray Ruiz of Jones Lang LaSalle represented Tritec and Castagna.

Whether you're looking at developing new corporate real estate, acquiring a building or leasing space, doing an environmental assessment is becoming a more and more important part of the due diligence process. Phase I and, when necessary, Phase II environmental site assessments help you assess the risks that come along with a piece of real estate.

If you own your building or you have a triple net lease that give you a degree of control over vendor selection, you have the ability to control many aspects of your operating expenses. While each building, each community and each ownership structure is unique, here are a few strategies that you can use to manage and, with some luck, reduce what it costs to operate your spaces.

At times, offices might seem like they are the read headed stepchildren of commercial real estate. Between flexible floor plans allowing employers to squeeze more workers into existing spaces, technology-enabled alternative work arrangements and a slow rate of growth in office-using jobs, at times it might seem like office buildings are going obsolete.

On the other hand, some of the fastest growing industries in America are heavy office users. While you might not be seeing as many regional sales offices taking up space as in the past, these five industries are likely to drive demand between now and 2022.

With all of the focus that many companies put on managing occupancy cost, it can be easy to think that cheaper space is usually better space. However, there are times when it's possible to spend too little on the spaces you rent. Ultimately, the right space isn't the one that costs you the least. It's the one that generates the most profit for your company. Here are some reasons that you might want to spend a little more, instead of a little less, when you look for a space:

Adding Value With Amenities

Modern workplaces frequently use their amenities to compete for talent. The onsite day-care center and fitness center isn't a feature anymore -- it's a given. Building lavish break rooms, employee cafes and yoga studios into your offices can balloon their sizes -- and their costs. Instead, looking at a building that may have a higher rent per square foot, higher CAMs, a higher load factor or a combination of all three but that also offers its own load of shared amenities could end up lowering your overall occupancy costs.

Better Branding

Moving  a few miles up New York's Fifth Avenue from the downtown Flatiron district to the tony shopping district south of Central Park entails an almost ten-fold increase in rent -- from $358 per square foot to over $3,000. Nevertheless, many companies feel that the branding benefit that comes from having a flagship location more than outweighs the higher occupancy cost. While your business might not need a retail outlet at Fifth and 55th, you can get some of the same branding benefits by upgrading from an older Class B building to the newest Class A property in your submarket.

Rent vs. CAM

Rent isn't the only component of occupancy cost. Some companies advertise low rents to attract tenants but make up for it by charging more for common area maintenance. Whether the rents are low because the building is old and needs repair or the CAM is high because the owner is double-dipping by charging a management fee for itself, you end up paying the same or more as you would in a building with higher rent but lower operating expenses.

The Value of Location

Location isn't only a branding benefit. It can lead to real operational savings as well. For instance, a closer-in warehouse can reduce what you spend to have goods trucked in and out. Given enough trips, even a few miles' difference can add up to real money over the course of a year's logistics budget. For a sales force that spends a great deal of time on the road, a location with excellent freeway access and proximity to clients may make the difference between a sales person making four calls a day or five.

Better Layout

Some spaces cost more because they make more sense. Spending more for a taller warehouse that gives you a larger cube -- if you can use it -- ends up saving you money in the long run. An office building with a larger floor plate that gives you a more contiguous office that you can lay out better could leave you with more usable space even after leasing less rentable space. Shaving 500 or 1,000 square feet off of your lease can frequently justify paying a few more dollars of per square foot occupancy cost.

Open Office Layout Drawbacks

New office layouts are both more and less open than layouts of the past. While many of the benefits of modern layouts have been touted widely, they are more complicated than they initially seem. Done right, a new office layout will serve more employees in fewer square feet while creating a physical space that encourages team work and collaboration. Done wrong, it creates an office where employees feel constantly on display and frequently interrupted. Here are some trends to keep in mind as you ponder renovating your office space.