It’s uncanny.
“If only our tenant clients would hire someone like you! It would be so much quicker and easier for us – and cheaper for the client. Not only that, the client would get a better deal!”
It happened again the other evening, in Winchester. There I was chatting away in a group that included a Commercial Property Lawyer and out came the same comment I always hear when I tell a Commercial Property Lawyer what I do for my clients.
Businesses lease and purchase premises all the time, but without the business owner seeking bespoke commercial property advice – a DIY job. The transactions mostly go through and sometimes there is not very much contention but it is often a struggle for the tenant’s solicitor to undo the damage without being so frank that they lose the instruction; and usually, some uncomfortable compromises are forced on the business owner who is unaware of just how much they have given away unnecessarily.
Time, money and stress are the costs to the business owner conducting the transaction without independent property advice. The solicitors tell me so every time.
“The solicitors must be able to sort it out. Isn’t that what they get paid for?” You might think so, but in fact – to their frustration and their clients’ detriment – the deal has been done by the time it lands on their desk. Too late to change the fundamental terms. Too late to wind the clock back and begin where the negotiation should have started.
The usual wrangle ensues between landlord’s solicitor saying, “This is an agreement. We are not willing to change anything”; and the business owner’s solicitor trying to rectify the worst mistakes that have, in all innocence, been allowed into the agreement by the DIY business owner.
The curious thing is this is such a well-recognised and acknowledged scenario.
Often it is the things that aren’t included in the Heads of Terms, that have the greatest potential for detriment. Things the business owner ought to have thought of but it’s too late. None of it is rocket science but it has the potential to blow up. Worse still, those little errors and nuances can simply just sit there, ticking, almost unnoticed, until they go off and potentially cost the business financially.
“If only our ‘tenant clients’ would get bespoke property advice, it would be so much quicker and easier for us – and cheaper for the client; not only that, the client would get a better deal!”
Well, that is where I come in. Bespoke property advice that could save your business valuable time and money.
