How many of the visibly empty units in your town or city centre actually have a tenant still paying the rent…?
It’s something we come across a lot on #TheVacantShopsAcademy tackling #highstreet vacancy commissions, and it’s typically one of the trickier issues to overcome.
To explain.
It means the tenant business or organisation left while they still had time on their lease agreement with the landlord. So they’re still paying rent, and sometimes are due to for many years.
With rents often now lower than they were when the agreement was signed the landlord has little incentive to progress things so the unit stays empty.
In some cases we see an agent’s board on the property but it’s typically on behalf of the tenant trying to, what’s called, “assign” the remainder of the lease.
I’ve never counted how many like this we’ve seen but it’s not rare and that assignment is really awkward to achieve.
So as a tackling vacancy-focused ‘place partnership’ you’ve a sometimes prominent, often deteriorating unit that may stay that way for ages.
It’d be interesting to hear from #property colleagues who have seen cases of this solved, as it can be.
