Landlord

Posted :Thursday, May 12, 2011by D Hamman Send Maill   

THE STORY

The law has only just came into effect and already the landlord of the shopping centre where my business is situated, is forcefully bending and changing the way things are supposed to work. I sold my business on and the contract stipulates that the landlord must agree to enter into a new lease agreement with the buyer. The landlord requested the usual documentation such as financial statements etc of the new tenant/buyer and agreed to enter into a new agreement.He called to say that everything is fine I taped the conversation)and we visit his office discuss the terms of the new contract. I still have 2 years and 5 months left on my contract which the buyer was happy to take over. Happy as a cat in the sun, with the purchase price safely paid into trust we met with the landlord. Once again he agreed to accept the new tenant and we discussed the various usual applicable issues. He then stated that he will only be prepared to agree on the following terms:
1. The new tenant must agree to a loan agreement, payable over a period of 2 years and 5 months. The payments would be equal to the amount of the rent.
2. I have to agree to sign surety for the new tenant, or by way of a session, still be responsible for the rent up to the end of our lease.
3. No option to renew the rent when the lease expires will be given.
He made it clear (and I have most of this conversation recorded)that the new consumer act provide for tenants to give 20 days notice. By enforcing the loan agreement he then will still be entitled to all the money owed for the entire rent period.
Of course the new buyer/tenant did not agree to enter into a loan agreement and I am not prepared to sign surety for the remaining lease period. The purchase of the business therefore fell through.
This means that I will never be able to sell my business. The new consumer act therefore backfired on me. This landlord will be detaining me untill the lease expires.
Clearly this is a way to protect himself or bypass the consumer law. Obviously, he will find it difficult in future to find new tenants if he wants to operate this way, but in my case and in my opinion the law is not pretecting me, but rather ruined my goodwill at the business and chances to sell that business to anyone else. I will have to tolerate a hostile landlord now as well because I was very upset and threatened to sue him and so on. Now our relationship turned very sour. Not only because of this deal, also due to another lease agreement I signed two and a healf years ago for another premises (with the same landlord) which was under construction. He failed to complete the building and I lost thousands of rands on furniture, licences, adverts etc for this business that never materialised.
Ironically, the business I am trying to sell were only started because of the other agreement. The two businesses were supposed to run in conjunction with each other and that is the main reason why I decided to sell this business.
If you could help please mail me or contact no 072-4972500
Yours Truly
Mr D Hamman