Businesses and landlords should carefully consider various factors when approaching commercial lease agreements. The landlord is often the party primarily responsible for drafting the lease agreement. Still, prospective tenants may also wish to negotiate for specific terms that they anticipate will be of value to their business.

• Always use proper business names in any lease agreement. It should be specified if either business uses a DBA (doing business as) name. 
• Identify the premises. While tenants are unlikely to walk through the wrong door, commercial properties often include outdoor spaces such as parking or alley access. Many commercial lease agreements often place multiple tenants in a single structure (such as in office or medical buildings in which businesses lease suites), so precisely delineating which portions of the property a tenant has the right to use and the degree of control they have within those premises, is a crucial step to take in the lease agreement to prevent unnecessary disputes arising from confusion. 
• Clearly show rent calculation methods. Particularly in the case of an agreement whose fee is not “fixed” over the term of the lease, landlords need to show how they arrive at the fees they charge and for tenants to understand any factors in their use of the premises that may cause their costs to go up or down.
• Set clear start and end dates. Whereas residential lease agreements are often signed for one or two years or even months, commercial lease agreements frequently cover much longer. Sometimes, tenant businesses or landlords may assume the lease will continue indefinitely. Assumptions, however, are seldom legally enforceable – and often lead to problems when not shared. Setting out explicit start and end dates in the contract and establishing options and procedures for lease renewal removes the risks involved in taking for granted that all parties share the exact expectations by putting those expectations in a document all involved can reference. 
• Specify how the premises may be used. Here again, the degree of control tenants will have over the premises they rent comes into play. Depending on how the landlord wishes to use any adjacent properties, specific activities (such as events scheduling that results in a sharp increase in traffic to and from the location or the use of certain hazardous substances in manufacturing) on the rented premises may be restricted or prohibited by the lease agreement.