What to negotiate on your medical office space lease

On The Texas Property Lawyer, I recently published a blog entry titled What to negotiate on your commercial office space lease and listed the following issues:

-Right to renew the lease
-Right to cancel the lease
-Insurance requirements
-Personal guarantees of the lease
-Security deposit
-Option for additional space if needed
-Permitted use of the premises
-Tenant buildout allowance
-Operating costs to be charged to tenant
-Right to assign the lease to another tenant
-Responsibility for repairs and maintenance

While there is no tremendous difference between medical office space and “regular” office space when it comes to negotiating the lease, the nuances of the health care industry might prompt the negotiation of some additional terms, or in the least give some issues listed above higher priority.

An additional term a health care professional should consider negotiating is exclusivity–while your lease is in effect, the landlord can not lease to another health care professional with your same specialty. While the larger the office building (think large MOB) won’t negotiate that term, smaller professional office parks and plazas should be more willing.

Because the buildout expenses required for a medical office tend to run high, negotiating a larger tenant buildout allowance should be a priority. And after you (partially) fund that buildout, the right to renew and option terms become even more important since the improvements stay with the building.