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Michael Lever

The Rent Review Specialist

(2026-July: LinkedIn) Investors like shops let to multiple retailers. The capital value of the investment covenant tends to hold its value. Multiple retailers generally have the resources to pay rent and honour lease commitments without reminder. But all that comes with a health-warning.

Come the rent review, the landlord is likely to meet resistance to increase by the tenant’s in-house/external surveyor. In prime positions where multiple retailers dominate, the network is tuned to exchanging evidence and toeing the party-line of nil increase. Referral is common, particular where multiple retailers are in trading positions whose retail profile is dominated by shopkeepers and local traders. On renewal, the landlord faced with the possibility of a lower rent and/or a short term lease with tenant break. Short leases are not only to avoid the upward-only rent review – a need that the imminent ban on u/o could end – but also the tenant has no confidence in its business model in that particular trading position or at all. In summary, in exchange for the pride in owning a shop let to a multiple retailer, the prospect for the landlord is the likelihood of non-recoverable costs and an underperforming investment.

Contrast that with a shop let to a shopkeeper or local trader. For landlords of these investments, the likelihood of a rent increase at review and renewal is higher because such tenants are realistic. Inherent in such tenant thinking is that, come the rent review and renewal, the rent is bound to go up. Unlike multiple retailers with layers of inefficiencies, too many mouths to feed and director life-styles to maintain, chief-cook-and-bottle-washers do not.

A minority of surveyors are on a crusade to encourage ‘small’ tenants to take professional advice for rent review and lease renewal. The claim that there are savings to be had when you know what you are doing, the implication that such tenants do not, is valid. Landlords have nothing to fear. Such surveyors do themselves disservice by overpricing their services for the market they want to cater for.

The number of shops that exist today stems from over-estimation of demand by landowners and developers since the late 1880s and at various times during the 20th century, and since. Over-estimating is an ingrained habit that nowadays a new multi-storey residential or office development typically includes ground floor shops.

Retailing is a entrepreneurial paradise for selling ideas. There are two types of retailer: a minority that has got what it takes to attract custom, and the majority that doesn’t so depends upon the minority to generate passing trade. Whenever the minority relocate, they take their customers with them. For those that stay put, footfall drops. Not all relationships are intended to last indefinitely, many are lessons.

The warning signs of trading positions and town centres in decline long before it is obvious are easy to spot when you know how.

(2026 July: LinkedIn) In Hoxton Market, London N1 6HG, whose neighbouring streets were/are multi-storey warehouses and workshops, is a three-storey building whose ground floor and basement were let to a carpet warehouse. A market had existed since c17, but disbanded before I became involved with the property. I first got to know about it when the landlord contacted me for advice. I do not know how the building came to be owned by the client, but in those days Hoxton Market was a scruffy place that had seen better days.

In common with other run-down areas of London that would one day becme trendy, when I did the probate valuation, the District Valuer (HMRC) disagreed with my opinion. The DV was convinced I had undervalued the potential. In discussion with the DV, we agreed that Hoxton Market had potential, but when would it materialise? We compromised, I managed to reduce the DV figure a little, making extra tax payable slighly more bearable.

When the carpet warehouse lease expired, the tenant not renewing, time to find a new tenant. Two offers: one from a small cafe in the area, the other from a young keen Greek – later known as the chef who taught the English to taste authentic Greek flavours, apart from moussaka and taramosalata.

On paper the cafe was the obvious choice, but something about Theodore Kyriakou’s offer I recommended giving a chance. I do not have my old file to hand to check whether he had another restaurant or if this ground floor and basement were to become the first of several “The Real Greek” restaurants, but him being guarantor to his company, paying a rent deposit, and financially-savvy backers for his venture was enough to convince.

Like all good ideas that are spot-on at the time, the concept proved to be a roaring success. It wasn’t long before 15 Hoxton Market became too small to cater for demand. Expansion took the restaurant into an adjoining building and a different landlord and for while I acted there as well, until inconsistencies I’d found between what was charged and in the lease led to an irreconcilable difference in opinion, I resigned. Media articles, TV and radio interviews and by then Hoxton Square potential materialised and firmly on the map, LiveBait t/a The Real Greek was subsequently acquired by MeatTailer.

Let at £25,000 pa to begin with, when I did the first rent review in 2004, the advisers had taken over and the landlord’s looking forward to a rent uplift resisted by the usual spurious reasoning. It took a while to get an increase to £38,000 pa and even longer for my interpretation the tenant be responsible for my fees, but we got there. By 2014, I’d got the rent up to £46,000 pa.

I’d been managing agent throughout the lease, collecting the building insurance premium, but on expiry my answer to a question on what do was misunderstood so my original client’s children did the renewal themselves. I gather they’d had to accept the reality then of a downturn in the market.

Looking this afternoon on Instant Sreetview at the frontage, painted bright red, I think the blue paint in my day was more tasteful.

A list of retailers and businesses with numerous branches that have entered administration and/or rescued and/or downsizing since 2003 and before. ABC and Year

(2026 June: LinkedIn) Many years ago, acting for a tenant, the landlord’s adviser was a chartered accountant. For my due diligence, knowing who I am dealing with, I contacted the Institute of Chartered Accountants to check the adviser was in fact a chartered accountant. No. The ICA immediately contacted him and required him to remove all mention from his website, notepaper, etc. He complied. The ICA thanked me for having brought it to their attention.

Last weekend while browsing on-line I came across a firm of commercial property surveyors of which I’d never heard. I haven’t heard of every firm, but what interested me was this firm’s several pages about rent review and why the firm should be instructed. The person to contact is an MRICS so I went onto RICS Find a Member and couldn’t find anyone of that name.

That didn’t surprise me. RICS Find a Member is an unreliable resource because to find someone you have to know two things you might not know: (1) their location, and (2) the name the RICS knows a member by, as distinct from the name the member uses on a daily basis*. Same evening, I emailed the RICS unable to find the person on FaM and asked whether a chartered surveyor; I attached pdfs of the firm’s website pages, and links.

[ * Some years ago, I was obliged to contact the RICS direct when I wanted to know whether the landlord’s surveyor was a chartered surveyor. I’d asked the surveyor direct for the name the RICS knew him by, but he wouldn’t tell me.]

The following morning, RICS Membership Support Person replied that the links suggest that the reference to MRICS is published on their official website. Person had checked the RICS member’s (sic) directory and the RICS system and confirmed that Mr X is not an RICS member as of that day. But the confirmation does not confirm that Mr X may not have been a member in the past.

That afternoon I replied to the Person, cc complaints@rics.org that surely the RICS should do something about it that day – immediately contact Mr X and tell him to remove all references to MRICS on the firm’s website and anywhere else. Either he is a chartered surveyor, or he isn’t; Person confirmed he isn’t.

RICS Complaints require completion of an on-line form, or by email. I had tried email by my cc: pointless. This form has been designed by myopia: having a narrow view of things. Nowhere on it is anywhere to report someone pretending to be an MRICS. Questions for which answers are optional must be answered regardless, or else the form won’t submit. I entered 123456 in the field ‘membership number’.

The Regulatory Support Team will review my concerns and respond within 42 working days. Meanwhile Mr X can continue taking on new business under false pretences.

(05/08/2026 LinkedIn views: 28,879)

(2026 June: LinkedIn) On lease expiry / renewal, landlords and tenants can add to their costs unnecessarily by discussing the matter with their solicitors.

For a renewal under LTA54 or grant of a new lease outside the Act, and where surveyors are instructed to negotiate the rent and outline terms and conditions for Heads of Terms, somewhere along the way solicitors will also be involved.

Except for some aspects of the instruction, most surveyors do not charge on a time-basis. Most solicitors however do charge on a time-basis. Not all solicitors do litigation so, where court procedures are involved, the conveyancing solicitor will recommend the client instructs litigation solicitors with whom the conveyancer has a working relationship.

Even if it’s the surveyor’s client to begin with, something all solicitors are prone to, unless the client specifically instructs otherwise, is assuming conduct of the matter.

Leaving it to the lawyers is commonplace. It is bad enough lawyers regarding Heads of Terms as the starting point for further negotiation in the drafting and approval of documents, sometimes resulting in one or both parties ending up with something different to what was agreed in principle – the client none the wiser until a rent review meets an experienced surveyor. (In a matter I’m involved with, had the solicitor been left to their own devices would have scuppered the entire deal.)

Litigation solicitors are something else. Part of their task is to try and settle the dispute without going to substantive hearing in court. They discuss with the client how to achieve that and set about it. Naturally, the client contacts the solicitor whenever something more to discuss. The clock is ticking. Advisers whose charges are time-based usually require an up-front payment. An up-front for example £750 to £1,000 at £350+VAT per hour doesn’t last long. One of the most profitable services provided by solicitors is an agreement to extend the end date of a s25 or s26 notice, a procedure to avoid the necessity for a court claim. After the initial drafting and approval, each subsequent agreement to extend is the same wording except for the extension date. Extensions are typically 3 months at a time, but can be shorter depending upon the circumstances. At approximately £750 + VAT for each extension, and 4 a year, the client would pay £3000 plus VAT. I rarely charge for drafting or approving extension agreements, all part of my service so anyone instructing me on a lease renewal would benefit. (This is not a hint: I have stringent criteria for taking on lease renewal instructions from new clients.)

A client discussing with a solicitor anything that the client’s surveyor could help with and/or would be the best person to deal with it is wasting money. In one case recently, a litigation solicitor charged my client tenant £10,000 ex VAT for what in theory made sense but in practice amounted to getting nowhere. I took over; Heads of Terms are with the conveyancers.

(LinkedIn: 1,694 views)

(2026 June: LinkedIn) Small to medium to big firms of surveyors want to give a good impression of the firm’s capabilities. In larger firms, fancy job descriptions are rife: ranging from the ubiquitous ‘Director’ to ‘Head of …’. Titles are good for outward impression, inquirers and clients like to know who they’re dealing with. It is of course not only property advisers that are into lawful misrepresentation, most if not all businesses nowadays are into giving the impression that the person whom the customer/client is dealing with has some level of authority. As I write this, I’m listening to David discussing with Tony Archer about being Chief Livestock Liaison.

Compared to agency commission instructions, commercial property professional services are the poor relation. In many firms, a department’s function is to deter clients from going elsewhere and taking their lucrative work with them. In some firms, rent reviews are loss-leaders. Although reasonable for clients to assume that a Head of Lease Advisory, for example, is bound to have a great deal of knowledge and know-how, in practice provided the surveyor knows more than the client that’s all that matters.

When negotiating a rent review, something that even ‘Heads’ stoop to, there is an unwritten rule that one side’s surveyor expects the other side’s surveyor to observe. Insisting compliance enables the insister to demolish the insistee’s stance. It is perhaps one of if not the most successful ways for a Head to achieve nil increase and reinforce relationship with a tenant client.

Long ago, in my newsltter, I wrote an article about combatting dynamic professionals. The first thing I do whenever communicating with someone never previously encountered is due diligence. Knowing who you are dealing with at rent review is essential. My reputation sometimes precedes me, but whether people that have never heard of me know who they’re dealing with just by reading my website content, no way.

Their clients don’t always realise this, at least not until it’s too late, but many surveyors want to get the job done as soon as possible so they can get on with the next. This attitude, more common than you might think, translates as can’t be bothered, simply not worth it as far as the surveyor is concerned. Is the client any the wiser? If that were possible, then they wouldn’t have instructed that firm in the first place. After all what sort of firm has people at the top of the ladder that allow people on the lower rungs anywhere near clients? The answer is firms whose main source of revenue is agency.

I think it’s a great pity that retiring principals of well-known firms whose professional integrity is undoubted sell to overseas agency-oriented companies, to be rebranded, their heritage erased. The systematic hoovering up of British firms is being replaced by mediocrity disguised as impressive and highlighting the shortage of surveyors that can do rent review properly.

(LinkedIn views: 572)

(2026 June: LinkedIn) In my opinion, valuation is about starting from scratch. Valuation based on evidence of what someone else has paid/rented for a different property is comparison. Knowing how to compare isn’t the same as knowing how to value.

In 2009, I was invited to talk to a group of surveyors, mostly, about how to value when there is no evidence. I thought very carefully while preparing my answer to read out loud and spent almost the entire time boring the audience. I didn’t set out to bore; on the contrary, it was a detailed explanation on how to value when there’s no evidence. I thought it fascinating and would hold people’s attention, but when I noticed a few people yawning I realised that what I was saying had become boring. The room wasn’t warm enough for people to yawn to stay awake. The possibility that what i was saying was so relaxing that yawning was the only way for them to avoid falling asleep. But if that were the case, then after I’d finished talking I would’ve expected some questions; most people departed as soon as they could. A couple of people did come up to me afterwards to ask questions, they were tenants, but none of the surveyors did.

I guess the answer I gave was not what they wanted to hear. Generally, people in property are very good at not listening to anything they don’t want to hear so maybe that attitude has rubbed off on their advisers. Perhaps explaining the difference between ‘need’ and ‘want’, a fundamental principle in marketing, was beyond them. Most surveyors are employees so don’t have any experience of being employers, let alone setting up on their own. When advising company directors and proprietors it’s important to have an understanding, personal experience even, of how a business is run. Contributing ideas and solutions for dealing with the sort of issues that bosses have to deal with regularly appeals to clients. For example, how to be rid of troublesome employees without being taken to an employment tribunal. How a corporate tenant can get rid of a lease without losing the company name. As I say to surveyors whenever they want me to take client’s instructions, I’m not a messenger boy, I’m a professional adviser.

The main reason that valuation is done by analogy is laziness. It’s much easier, quicker, and more profitable for surveyor revenue to assume that what someone else has paid for something else would be paid pro-rata for the property in question. Valuation for company accounts is an example of not doing what is being paid for. When you look at the sort of properties that quoted propcos own, most is rubbish in the scheme of things yet somehow a resale market exists. From the discount between share price and last reported net asset value, it’s obvious that shareholders have no confidence in the valuations. Were it not for analogy, for reliance on comparable evidence passed off as valuation, the commercial property investment market would collapse.

( 2026-06-13 – LinkedIn views: 3,293. Supportive comments, including “Fabulous post”.)

(2026-May: Linked) Lawyers like certainty. Don’t we all? Certainly enables us to rely on it. For example, the weather forecast. This is not a certainty, it is a forecast yet many people rely on this scientific prediction as if it is certain it will rain tomorrow even when tomorrow arrives it is dry. My theory of the weather is that it listens to the weather forecast and decides that the best time to not do as it is told is during a bank holiday weekend. I am fond of telling friends that i have an arrangement with the weather. The arrangement is that sometimes the weather can let me down as, for example, happened a long time ago when with a friend we set off to walk the 7 miles around London’s Richmond Park, she with umbrella, me unprepared for an afternoon of rain.

Lawyers like certainty for its objectivity, so it is fascinating how many disputes at rent review involve a different interpretation. For example, In the wording of a permitted user, the innocuous ‘and’ – whether conjunctive or disjunctive?

Currently, I am reading about valuation yardsticks. For those unfamiliar with the terminology, a yardstick provides certainty where none would or might otherwise exist. For example, the permitted use is a dental surgery, the valuation basis is offices. The fact if it is that the premises used as a dental surgery do not have and might never get planning permission for offices is irrelevant. The parties, most likely the landlord, wanted the premises to be valued as if offices. Sometimes the intention in being too specific goes awry as in Dukeminster (Ebbgate House One) Ltd v Somerfield Properties Co Ltd 1997.

For a landlord, hinging a rent review onto something other than the vagaries of the open market – in which the rent of the premises in question rely on the certainty at the review/valuation date of another landlord having obtained a higher rent for comparable premises – makes sense. During the 1970s, the institutional investor invention of the upward-only rent review recognised the downside of allowing the open market to be an arbiter. So now that it’s only a matter of time before upward-only review is banned, and forward-thinking has for the most part put a lid on index-linking, a solution, it seems to me, is to hinge a review to two figures: (1) a fixed increase at say 25% of the initial rent and (2) a fixed decrease at say 10% of the initial rent. With the initial rent known in advance, the tenant would know the maximum and minimum rents applicable at the review date and be able to negotiate between the known extremes.

(2025-May: LinkedIn) Auctions on-line: a worrying trend: taking more on trust than in the old days.

In the old days, not that long ago, auctions were held in rooms: a combination of prospective bidders physically present and telephone bidders. Part of an auctioneer’s job is to get the bidding started and continuing even if imaginary. The advantage of presence enabled others to see the bidding by bidders putting their hands up (or regular buyers a physical signal known to the auctioneer, such as a nod) With no need to register beforehand, impulse bidding possible. Auction fever common, buyers carried away by the excitement into overpaying. (When I lived in London, I sold my house, a thatched cottage, at auction: the auctioneer got the only bidder in the room to bid against herself up to the reserve price.) On the fall of the hammer an auction lot is sold subject to the buyer signing the auction memorandum (binding contract) and paying the deposit, normally 10%. An auctioneer’s assistant would get the buyer to do that straightaway. It was still possible for the buyer to do a runner immediately, but unusual. It was also possible for a buyer to fail to complete and lose the deposit, but at least the seller got 10%. Once upon a time, completion was 4 weeks. It became extended to enable buyers to get loans arranged.

Auctions on-line only have a different dynamic. A bidder has to be registered beforehand, usually the day before, (usually before 6pm – auctioneers go home early!). There may be other reasons for the seller withdrawing, but in any event no registered bidders means on the day of the auction the property is withdrawn.

At auction on-line, there are.only three ways to buy without being a registered bidder: prior to auction, after no sale at the auction, someone else registering as the bidder, be the winning bid to purposely jeopardise the sale, fail to sign the memo and pay a deposit, and hope to get it for less after the auction.

An auctioneer is authorised to sign the memorandum on behalf of both parties, but zero deposit. Although a memorandum is a binding contract, without a deposit, nothing for the seller to get without taking the buyer to court incurring the extra costs to begin with.

Auctioneers can blacklist time-wasters and do: word gets round. But for credibility such buyers buy occasionally so difficult to prove. Sellers are none the wiser until after the event.

Selling prior is about judicious choice. Where the offer is above the reserve, and more than one offer prior, it doesn’t follow the highest is best choice. Allowing an accepted offer time to sign the auction contract and pay the deposit eats into the time remaining between acceptance and the auction. I have been a seller at auction twice. Once my own house, the second an executor not prior – In the room were several bidders and win completed. As an adviser to clients selling at auction, lots of times, including prior. Greed versus caution? After due diligence, gut-feeling best.

(2026-May: Linkedin) “I always find Michael’s comments welcome reminders of what a retained agent should be in terms of expertise, knowledge, application and common sense. Even in my world of media assets, possibly even more so, finding the right agent/expert is critical. Sadly, in my world it is often true that landlords are taking advice from agents/experts who actually know nothing or have relied upon hearsay and corrupted evidence. One such example was a City asset management team recounting and relying upon evidence supplied to a neighbouring City team as ‘evidence of the open market’ when that evidence was actually supplied by their tenant in negotiations.”

Posted on LinkedIn by Tim Thomas; Chartered Surveyor acting exclusively for landowners in the management of OOH and DOOH media assets since 1990.