Anyone qualified in commercial property advice?

[Toffer]

Hi all,

I'm not after a freebie. I'm happy to pay for the correct advice. Here's the problem below. Can anyone help?

My Ltd company rents a commercial unit from a landlord. We don't have a lease agreement with him. We then sub-let a small area of the unit to another ltd company. There is also no rental agreement between us. This setup has been in place for 6 months or so. All rent payments have been invoiced and paid legitimately via bank transfer.

The company that rents the small area from us has not paid their rent for 3 months and are not communicating with us. They still have some stock in our premises. What can I do or how do I go about dealing with this?

The amount of rent they owe me is not massive. I'm not fussed about going after the overdue rent. I'd really like them to just remove their property and leave. They are actually still coming down to the unit and adding and removing items on a weekly basis.

Where do I stand and what can I do about this?

Thanks in advance.

 

[DvanBins]

Hi Toffer,

Having read your enquiry it certainly sounds like something you should go to a specialist for. I'm an ex-lawyer myself and one of the things I learnt in my time in law is that going to a specialist will probably save you money.

A lawyer that says they are a jack of all trades may in reality be a master of none. They may end up charging you for the time they have spent researching how to carry out your work, which means you pay more in the end. Whereas a specialist will know the ins and outs of what to do without having to spend time researching something they aren't sure of.

If you're still looking for advice, I'd love to help. I've set up a website called Lexoo.co.uk where we will get you multiple quotes from specialist lawyers, who are all pre-screened by myself. More specifically we have many lawyers on our platform who exclusively focus on commercial property, and I'm sure they'd love to help you too.

Feel free to check our site out at www.lexoo.co.uk and get in touch!

 

[Toffer]

Thanks for the response. I contacted a specialist in commercial law and it looks like we've got a solution.

It turns out because they don't have 'exclusive use' of the premises (they basically store some items in the corner of our unit) then it doesn't constitute a tenancy agreement. It comes under the definition of a license instead which can be terminated upon non payment of rent. I can also change locks and do whatever I like.

Therefore It looks like I'll change the locks. Inform them the license has been terminated and they should collect their belonging within a month.

I thought I'd post my solution so others can learn from it.