Balancing the Pandemic for Landlords and Tenants

GDL has helped landlord and tenant clients to navigate the shifting regulations and business operation best practices during the Covid-19 crisis. The new normal in the Covid pandemic has generated new risks, regulations, and changes in best practices. Leasing activity during the Covid-19 pandemic has been very challenging for both landlords and tenants. Here is a short list of the complicated issues:

  • Rent relief.
  • Delivery condition risk-sharing.
  • Sanitation.
  • Access.
  • Government requests for personal information.
  • HVAC filtering and air-balancing standards.
  • Adjustment of operating expense calculations to reflect unusual expenses due to pandemic responses.
  • Flexibility for parking rights due to a business’s work-from-home versus in-office worker volume fluctuation.

Since the public health emergency commenced, GDL’s Donald Holmes has negotiated many rent relief agreements on behalf of landlord and tenant clients all over the DC metropolitan region. During the pandemic, among the many transactions that he helped to close, Mr. Holmes negotiated a 21,000 square foot lease for the landlord to bring national law firm Ballard Spahr to new space in downtown Baltimore. Helping clients navigate the market’s fluid demands with respect to commercial leasing in the Covid-19 environment, Mr. Holmes also successfully negotiated multiple 15,000-20,000 square foot new lease deals for office buildings in DC’s East End submarket, along with several extension, relocation, space reduction (or expansion) lease deals (both retail and office) throughout the region, many of them including substantial modification of existing lease terms to address the myriad of issues related to the pandemic.

Greenstein DeLorme & Luchs, P.C.