New here: dog daycare, name picked, and a warehouse lease I don't understand

Nate Harrison· Dog daycare and boarding; name picked, negotiating a warehouse lease· Named it, Pet Services·3w

Nate, and I'm at the stage where the business is real in my head and nowhere else. Dog daycare and boarding. Name's picked, domain's bought, and I've spent six weeks negotiating on a 6,000 square foot warehouse near a light industrial strip, because that's the only kind of space that can take the noise.

Here's where I'm stuck. The landlord sent a lease that is 31 pages, and from roughly page 14 onward it's a language I don't speak. Triple net, CAM charges, and a personal guarantee that appears to follow me for the full seven years whether the business lives or dies. A realtor friend says that's normal. Normal and fine aren't the same word.

Background: I'm not from this industry. I managed a warehouse for eight years and I have two dogs, which is either a great foundation or a punchline.

In my way this week: deciding whether to pay a lawyer $1,200 to read this thing before I sign, when the whole point of the last eight months has been not spending money I don't have yet.

Anyone signed a commercial lease as their first real move? What did you wish you'd pushed back on while you still had the chance?

3 replies

Brianna Sato· Open·3w

Pay the lawyer. I signed a lease on a truck yard without one because I was $1,000 into a $6,000 month and spending it felt insane. Two things a lawyer would have caught: the CAM charges were uncapped, so my rent went up eleven percent in year one and there was nothing to argue about, and the personal guarantee had no burn-off in it at all.

The burn-off is the thing to push on. Mine now drops to two years of rent after year three because I asked, badly, in an email, with no leverage, and the landlord just said yes. That ask cost me nothing.

Tasha Morgan· Named it·3w

From the other side of the table. I manage short-term rentals and I'm building into property management, so I read leases constantly and I still hire someone for my own.

Two specifics for a dog facility. First, check the permitted use clause actually says kennel or animal boarding, not just warehouse and general commercial. Municipalities and landlords both get strange about animals, and general commercial is how you find out in month four. Second, get drainage, floor modifications and soundproofing named in writing as approved improvements before you sign, or they become your cost with their approval still required anyway.

Nate Harrison· Named it·3w

Permitted use says 'warehouse, storage and light commercial' and the word animal does not appear anywhere in 31 pages. So that's my Monday sorted.

I sent the lawyer's retainer this morning. Between the two of you I've decided $1,200 to not be personally on the hook for seven years of a business that might not work is the cheapest thing I'll buy all year. Thank you both, genuinely. I was going to sign it Friday.

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