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A letter says the building was sold. It asks you to attorn. You’re hunched over your desk, commercial lease spread open next to the one-page notice slipped under your office door this morning, and the phrase “attornment” jumps off the page in bold, underlined font where the new property owner marked it for your attention. You don’t remember seeing that term when you signed your lease three years ago, so you slow down to parse every line of the letter before you react, ignoring the ping of your work chat to give the document your full focus.
What your attornment request page states
This document is not a request to renegotiate your lease, nor is it a notice of eviction or a rent increase, unless those terms are explicitly laid out in attached supplementary pages. At its core, the letter formalizes the transfer of landlord obligations from the previous property owner to the new buyer, and asks you to confirm you will recognize the new entity as the party responsible for upholding the terms of your existing lease. The page will list specific key details upfront: the full legal name of the new property owner, the contact information for their designated property management team, the official closing date of the building sale, the deadline for you to sign and return the completed letter, and a note that all existing lease terms remain in effect unless explicitly modified by a signed addendum. You will also see a line that clarifies any security deposit you paid to the previous landlord has been transferred to the new owner, and will be held for the duration of your lease per the original terms you agreed to. You can cross-reference standard attornment requirement best practices through Lease Jacket if you want to confirm the request follows standard commercial real estate norms for your region. You take a highlighter and mark each of these key details first, so you can easily cross-check them against your existing lease paperwork in the next step. You also note any blank spaces in the letter, like missing contact information for the new management team, that you will flag for follow-up before you consider signing.
How your current lease terms compare
This is the only side-by-side check you need to run before you sign or respond to the request, and it takes less than 10 minutes if you have your original lease handy. You walk through the following four steps to confirm no unapproved changes are slipped into the attornment request:
- Cross-reference the stated rent amount in the attornment letter with the base rent listed on page 2 of your lease, including any pre-negotiated annual increase amounts that are set to take effect over the remainder of your lease term. Make sure there are no unexpected jumps in rent listed that were not part of your original signed agreement.
- Confirm the lease end date listed in the letter matches the date you negotiated when you signed, including any early renewal options you locked in upfront, as well as the notice period you are required to give if you choose not to renew at the end of your term.
- Verify that all additional financial obligations, like your required contribution to common area maintenance, property tax pass-throughs, or shared utility fees, are identical to the terms laid out in your original lease, with no hidden adjustments or new fees added without your written consent.
- Check that the required notice period for any future changes to the property, like planned structural renovations, changes to shared amenity access, or mandatory building-wide system upgrades, matches the 30-day written notice requirement outlined in your original lease addendum.
Illustrative example: If your current lease lists common area maintenance fees at 1.2% of your monthly base rent, any attornment letter that lists that fee at 1.5% is a discrepancy you flag immediately, even if the letter claims the rate was adjusted uniformly for all tenants during the property sale. You do not sign the letter until that discrepancy is resolved in writing, and you have a signed document from the new owner confirming the original, agreed-upon rate will remain in effect for the full duration of your lease. You also note that if any new terms are added to the attornment letter that were not part of your original lease, you have the right to negotiate those terms before you sign, just as you did when you first signed your lease with the previous owner. If the new owner refuses to adjust the terms to match your existing agreement, you can respond in writing noting the discrepancies and requesting a formal meeting to resolve the issue before you provide your signed attornment.
When you revisit this document after following up
When you stand up after finishing your initial review and marking any discrepancies on the attornment letter, you slide the document into the left pocket of your lease binder, right next to the receipt for your original security deposit and the signed addendum for your custom office build-out, so you can easily pull it back up when you follow up with the new property management team later that week. When you return to this document a few days later, you have the written responses to all your questions in hand, and you can run one quick final check to confirm all the adjusted terms match your original lease agreement before you sign. You double-check that the new owner has signed the letter as well, and that you receive a fully executed copy for your records before you send your signed version back.
Once you have a fully executed copy of the attornment letter in hand, you file it permanently with your original lease paperwork, in the same tab where you keep all other formal correspondence related to your space. You make a note in your calendar to pull this document back out 90 days before your lease renewal date, so you can reference the new owner’s contact information when you reach out to discuss renewal terms, or to confirm your security deposit transfer if you choose to move out at the end of your term. You also keep a digital scan of the signed attornment letter in your cloud storage folder for your business records, so you can access it quickly if you ever need to reference the change of ownership for tax purposes, or if you need to submit proof of your lease terms for a business loan or vendor application. If you have any additional changes to your lease terms negotiated as part of the attornment process, you attach those signed addenda to the back of the attornment letter before you file it, so all related paperwork is stored in the same place for easy access. You confirm that any pre-approved modifications you made to the space, like the additional electrical outlets you installed for your server room, are still recognized as allowed under the lease, and that the new owner will not require you to remove them at the end of your lease unless that was a term in your original agreement. You don’t need to take any additional action after that, other than updating your accounts payable system to send your monthly rent payments to the new property management address listed in the letter, and adding the new maintenance contact to your phone for any future repair requests. (Word count: 1297)