Read Before You Sign
The rate gets the attention. These five clauses decide whether you can sell the practice, whether the landlord can move you, and whether the lease follows you home.
$0 to your practice. The landlord pays our fee.
Send us your lease Call (210) 384-2342Rent is the number everyone negotiates. These are the clauses that decide what the lease actually costs a medical practice over ten years, in the order we usually find them doing damage.
The landlord can move you. Many office leases let the landlord relocate a tenant to comparable space in the building on notice. For an office tenant that is an inconvenience. For a practice with plumbed exam rooms, a lead-lined X-ray room, a sterilisation suite or a lab, it is a rebuild, and the clause often caps what the landlord pays for the move at far less than it costs.
The clause that decides whether you can sell your practice. A practice sale, a merger, bringing in a partner, moving the lease into a new entity or into an MSO or DSO structure: each is an assignment or a change of control, and a standard clause gives the landlord an unconditional veto over all of them. The buyer of your practice needs the lease more than almost anything else in the deal.
What you may do, and what your neighbour may not. The permitted-use clause defines what the practice may do in the space. Written narrowly, it blocks the services you add in year four. The exclusive-use clause, when there is one, keeps the landlord from leasing to a competing practice in the same building. When there is not one, there is nothing to stop a second orthodontist from opening across the hall.
The clause that follows you home. Most landlords ask the physician to guarantee the lease personally. A full, unlimited guaranty for the entire term means a practice that closes in year three leaves the doctor personally liable for every month of rent through year ten.
Your right to stay, on terms you can predict. A renewal option is only worth what its terms say. An option at "market rate" with the landlord deciding what market is, exercised in a narrow notice window you have to remember, is close to no option at all. An option that disappears on assignment leaves the buyer of your practice with a lease that ends.
Also Worth A Look
The rent that applies if you stay past expiration, often 150% to 200% of the last month. Negotiate it down and make the first month or two holdover at the prior rate while a renewal is being papered.
A cap on annual increases in controllable expenses, a defined base year, and the right to audit the reconciliation.
Who pays for ADA, fire, HVAC and electrical upgrades the building needs to support a medical use. Not the tenant, as a starting position.
A one-time right to end the lease on notice and a defined payment. Expensive to exercise, cheap to ask for, and the right answer for a practice whose future is uncertain.
We negotiate the business terms. Your attorney reviews the lease document. This page is general information about medical office leases, not legal advice.
Not Ready To Call
Send us the lease you have or the proposal you were handed. Within 72 hours we tell you what stands out: the rate against the market, the terms worth a closer look, and whether there is anything to do right now. No agreement, no fee for that, and your landlord does not hear about it.
San Antonio and South Texas
Our free tool at satxleasecheck.com compares the rent you pay against what the market charges for buildings like yours and flags the terms worth a closer look.
Keep Reading
What This Costs Your Practice
It is in the listing agreement before you walk in.
You do not save it. Their broker keeps it.
For most practices, $0 and no invoice from us.
Same fee, two ways to split it. One of them puts a negotiator in your corner. The other does not.
A few situations differ, such as owner-direct, physician-owned and sublease space. We confirm the fee in writing on every building before you tour it. Brokerage fees are negotiable and not set by law.
Common Questions
Not all of them, every time. But each one is a normal request from a represented medical tenant, and the landlord's response tells you something. What is not normal is a practice signing a ten-year lease without anyone having asked.
No. Until it is signed everything is open, and the draft is the landlord's first position on the document just as the proposal was on the economics. Send it over.
You should have an attorney review the lease. What a broker adds is the market: which of these terms landlords in your submarket are actually giving, what comparable practices got, and the leverage of a real alternative. Business terms first, then legal review, is also the cheaper order.
We read it against the terms you agreed and the market, usually within 72 hours.
Send us your lease Call (210) 384-2342