Your Landlord Doesn't Want to Re-Lease Your Space: How to Renegotiate Your Lease

You've heeded Franklin D. Roosevelt's advice, recognizing as he did that, "It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something." You've already dulled your sharpest paring knife; staff is at a minimum; inventory is threadbare; marketing (hah!). Still, a graph of recent revenues shows that after they flatlined, they went over a cliff. Not so good, but hopeless? No.

You have no more good ideas about how to stop taking on water. You are too busy plugging leaks and bailing the flooded mess. Until the consuming public regains confidence in itself, you can't depend on increasing revenues. Relief, if any can be found, must come from reduced expenditures. There is little else you can cut without compromising your reputation, the quality of what you deliver or your standards of service; in short, your business. Still, you have to do something.

Too many tenants believe that putting their heads in the sand will solve all their problems, and they always seem to find out too late that an unflattering negotiating posture yields little value. So why not just ask your landlord for some help? Before you do, however, take a deep breath and remember that your landlord is your business partner, not your adversary.

See the World Through Your Landlord's Eyes

Your success and that of your landlord are interwoven pieces of the same quilt. The lease you share represents a business deal: It only makes sense if it works for everyone. Why should your landlord care about keeping you in business? From a purely economic vantage point, for his own self-interest, of course. Consider the following: