Rent Acceleration

Rent Acceleration

Landlord's Powers to Accelerate

Default May Result in Acceleration of Rent

...or it may not. Strong commercial leases usually have language which gives the Landlord the right, if the tenant defaults on anything, to accelerate all the rent, i.e. require immediate payment of all the rent remaining due through the end of the lease. This is known as acceleration. Some leases are not drafted so carefully, however, and often make acceleration hard or impossible. For instance, many state that only rent can be accelerated, and then fail to define rent as including other fees, costs or payments due to the landlord, for, say, damage repairs caused by the tenant. The tenant may owe the landlord for these amounts, but if they are not defined in the lease as 'rents' or 'other rents', then an acceleration clause which is triggered by failure to pay 'rent' will not be triggered by failure to pay the reimbursement. In other words, leases have to be drafted very carefully in order for acceleration clauses to really work.

Mitigation Duties and FED Actions

Accelerating rent is difficult do accomplish unless the landlord is filing an action for forcible entry and detainer, or FED, otherwise known as eviction. This has to do with the case law relating to forfeitures combined with a landlord's duty to mitigate. Therefore, most landlords put up a three-day notice on the door and move forward with eviction, even when they would be perfectly happy letting the tenant remain in possession as long as rent could be accelerated. Since it is hard to simply accelerate and leave the tenant in possession, they go forward with full eviction. If you need a Denver Business Lawyer to discuss an eviction, rent acceleration issue or FED case, call us today. We want to speak with you.

Call a Denver business lawyer at Williams Law, P.C. today for your free telephone consultation.