The right tenant, on terms that hold up.

They describe who pays the operating costs on top of rent. Under a triple net lease the tenant pays base rent plus a proportionate share of property taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance, so the quoted rate is not what you pay. Full service bundles those costs into a single rate, and modified gross sits between the two, with the split spelled out in the lease. A $1.20 triple net rate and a $1.70 full service rate can produce almost identical occupancy costs, which is why comparing quoted rates across lease types is meaningless until you convert them to a total cost per square foot.

It depends almost entirely on the condition of the space you are taking. Second-generation space that already has the infrastructure for your use needs far less than a cold shell, where the tenant is effectively building the interior from the slab up. The allowance is quoted in dollars per rentable square foot and is normally amortized into the rent, so a larger allowance is not free — the landlord recovers it. Negotiate the allowance after you have agreed a rate the landlord is happy with, not before, and get the scope, the permit responsibility, and the payment trigger in the LOI.

Generally not as a whole, but parts of it can be. An LOI is a term sheet that records the commercial deal before attorneys draft the lease, and it usually states expressly that it is non-binding. Provisions on confidentiality, exclusivity, and who pays costs are often drafted to bind, so read the document rather than assuming. The practical point is that an LOI sets the anchor for everything that follows: terms you leave out are far harder to win back once the lease is being drafted, so settle rent, term, allowance, free rent, options, and guarantees there.

This single question can be worth more than the rent negotiation. If free rent runs from execution, it burns while you are still permitting and building, and you may be paying rent before you can open. If it runs from certificate of occupancy or from opening for business, you get the benefit when you can actually trade. On a build-out that runs several months, the difference between the two is often the largest concession in the deal, and it is decided by a single clause most tenants never argue about.

Understand exactly what you are signing before you decide. A full personal guarantee puts your personal assets behind every obligation in the lease for its entire term. The alternatives worth negotiating are a limited guarantee capped at a fixed number of months of rent, a burn-off that expires after a period of on-time payment, or a good-guy clause that releases you if you vacate properly and give notice. Landlords expect this to be negotiated, particularly for a tenant with operating history, and the request costs you nothing.

Because the listing broker is contractually obligated to the landlord. They are competent and often pleasant, and their duty runs the other way: to get the highest rent and the fewest concessions for their client. In most Los Angeles commercial deals the landlord already pays a commission that is split with a tenant representative, so a tenant who negotiates unrepresented is frequently not saving that cost, only forfeiting the representation it would have bought. Confirm the commission arrangement early so you know what your own broker actually costs you.

We work Los Angeles County with real depth in a handful of submarkets rather than shallow coverage everywhere. Our leasing and tenant-rep activity concentrates in Van Nuys and the central San Fernando Valley, Sun Valley and the east Valley industrial corridors, Burbank, Glendale, Northeast Los Angeles, and the Bell and Vernon industrial corridor. If your requirement sits outside those, tell us and we will say honestly whether we are the right firm for it.