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Michael Lever

The Rent Review Specialist

(2026-10: LinkedIn) …subject to client entrusting, an opportunity for my way of thinking.  

9/13 Powis Street, Woolwich, London SE18 8HZ In 2009, this 5228 sqft building on ground floor, basement, and three upper floors (offices and ancillary) in a prime trading position was let to Bank of Scotland plc (Lloyds Banking Group) for 10 years at £165,000 pax with review in 2014. Soon after, the freehold investment was sold prior to auction. 2014 review nil increase. 

Buyer, new client, instructs me to deal with lease renewal 2019. CBRE for the Bank, ITZA agreed 1166.56 sqft. Interim rent 2019 to 2024, contractual term 2024 for 3 years at £102,250 pax.  Zone A level down from £132.61 to circa £95. 

October 2025 Bank closes branch. Buyer instructs me to advise and deal with. Two serious expressions of interest from national covenants. I invite best offers, can only have only one winner. I draft and circulate Heads of Terms. Bank wants to surrender, I negotiate 6 figure consideration and agree HoT, target completion January 2026. 

Offer subject to planning consents under Agreement for Lease. Prospective tenant applies for planning consents months before AFL completed in July 2026. Bank lease surrender just 6 months after target completion. 

Legals take ‘forever’, not the lawyers fault, simply too much missing information. I liaise with the client’s solicitors on documents at every inch of the way, client leaves most decisions to me. I organise removal of asbestos and safes. Planning consents granted, completion at long last today. 

Tenant t/a KFC. Lease excludes s24-28 LTA54, 20 years at Headline Zone A £115.73, RR-5: first review index-linked cap-and-collar, otherwise to open market rent, upward-only. Tenant break at year 10 and 15, 

Thanks to Callum Mortimer of Four & Co, acting for ‘KFC’, for all his help throughout.

(2026-Oct: LinkedIn) It’s a legal term. From Living Waters Christian Centres Ltd v Fetherstonhaugh 1999, it means like-for-like in all respects as far as possible. The perfect comparable a rare thing, surveyors make technical adjustments and allowance to allow for differences.

What it’s not is picking a rent of another or other properties at random and merely adjusting for differences in position/location.

Rent buys more than location/position and floor space. It buys everything the lease says the tenant can and cannot do, and everything the lease does not mention. Naturally, landlords like to keep control of their properties. Allowing the tenant to do whatever the tenant likes is high risk. With shops, control is sometimes relaxed: instead of the tenant having to ask for the landlord’s consent for a change of use, in effect having to get the landlord’s approval for the tenant’s business idea, the permitted use is for example Use Class E. As most tenants mind their own business, this flexibility is rarely taken advantage of. However, a tenant’s choice of business that pleases a landlord in E(a) “for the display or retail sale of goods other than hot food principally to visiting members of the public” could easily turn into E(d) “for indoor sport, recreation or fitness, not involving motorised vehicles or firearms principally to visiting members of the public” before morphing into E(g)(iii) “any industrial process being a use which can be carried out in any residential area without detriment to the amenity of that area by reason of noise vibration smell fumes soot” and nothing the landlord can do.

Like-for-like in all respects is not confined to the overt. A lease, a commercial contract, is private and confidential between the parties. What a lease allows and prohibiits is just as important as what the property looks like on the outside. As Nick French, a senior lecturer and Donaldstons fellow in real estate at the University of Reading. writing in Estates Gazette 29 October 2005 “Comparable evidence needs to be verifiable in order to be acceptable in court (the potential final. arbiter of the valuation).”

Valuation is not only about numbers, not simply dividing the rent by floor area or ITZA; equally. if not more importantly, it is also about the wording and phrasing in the lease. With no standard lease for all commercial property, any difference between the wording in the lease of evidential premises compared to the wording in the lease of the property in question is crucial. In Flanders Community Centre Ltd v Newham London Borough Council 2016, the judge rejected the landlord’s evidence of comparables as unreliable – the lease terms were not available so it the judge could not consider whether they contained onerous terms.  

At the negotiating stage, it doesn’t matter that one or both side’s evidence is not as thorough. On referral, a cavalier attitude in the face of thorough analysis is certain to lose.

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(2026-10: LinkedIn) Now that chartered surveyors act for their clients as expert witness, it has become a lot easier for me to win when I’m acting for their landlords or tenants.

It helps that the surveyors acted as negotiators for their clients before the referral, but that is not essential. The determining factor is their propensity for acting as expert witness. Despite the principle that the overriding duty of an expert witness is to the tribunal, regardless of the party paying the EW’s fee, despite the RICS PS, it seems, in my experience, to be difficult for a typical EW to comply. I doubt their clients care: their client wants the result the client wants. The client leaves it to the surveyor to do the clients bidding. A client that cares about the procedure would, in my view, instruct a different surveyor from a different firm to carry out the task. A client’s surveyor likewise. 

For EW credentials, how much of the experience is personal compared to that of the firm for which the EW works is a moot point. EW credentials are essential in being taken seriously. I have written about surveyors claiming to be directors of the firm when in fact they are director in name only. Wouldn’t it make sense to tell the truth when signing a statement of truth? 

Reliance on pro-forma hearsay evidence without providing a copy lease of the property concerned is asking for trouble. Not allowed to rely upon what is told: an EW is expected to investigate and verify the facts for her/himself.

Sometimes I am instructed to act for the client at the 11th hour so have to request the third party to extend by a few weeks the first closing date for proceedings. A reasonable request that from experience third parties agree. One might think the other side’s EW would concur, but often they object. An EW cannot object: an EW is indifferent to the wider consequences for his client. 

Inevitably perhaps where a tenant is concerned about the landlord’s proposal, the tenant will express the feeling vehemently. An EW might share the sentiment but should refrain from letting on. An EW is neutral, indifferent to the consequences for the client. Emotional outbursts have no place in professional opinion. 

Where surveyors are fee-driven, the extra few thousand their firms charge doesn’t go far where a thorough job is expected. So reports often contain a great deal of padding, focus on rental value regardless of the underlying facts. 

Writing a skill and choosing words carefully important when wanting a third party, reading between the lines, to agree with the writer. Pre-conceived goals in EW reports are common. The executive summary at the outset, to influence the third party, I tell third parties is an insult to the third party’s intelligence. Generally, reports are template. Bespoke take too many late nights to compose. Take a chance on getting away with it. 

It’s not about clients getting what they pay for, but who they pay for.  

[2026-10-09 – 1,736 views on LinkedIn]

(2026-Oct: LinkedIn) What’s the difference between negotiating a rent review and doing a rent review? The short answer is that negotiating a rent review is more likely to result in a rent different to that envisaged by the lease.

Per caselaw, a rent review is for the benefit of both parties so, ideally, the parties/their surveyors should work together to establish the market rent. Invariably, tenants do not see it like that. Consequently, a negotiated settlement means that the parties’ decisions are invariably subjective. 

However, a rent review is objective. The market rent (as defined by the lease) is not what the actual landlord would accept or the actual tenant could afford  – such are subjective – but what a hypothetical willing landlord and a hypothetical willing tenant would agree – such are objective. [A hypothetical tenant includes the actual tenant unless expressly excluded by the lease.)

For a tenant, the money has to come from somewhere. For a hypothetical tenant, the money is there regardless.  For a landlord, rental growth and investment performance are factors to consider. But, for the hypothetical landlord, so too the hypothetical tenant, per business tenancy law, the wider consequences are irrelevant. Business tenancy law is not interested in whether a tenant can afford to pay or a landlord can afford to accept. 

Leases generally provide a choice of how a rent review can be done: either by agreement or decided by a third party. Agreed is likely to be based on subjective decisions. Leases do not usually stipulate how the agreement has to be reached. It is only third party procedure that is subject to the hypothetical lease.

Where surveyors tend to treat referral to a third party as the basis for negotiation, really there is no justifaction for thinking like that. Negotiation is subjective.

A perennial criticism is that a negotiated settlement on rent review is unlikely to achieve as much rent as could be obtained by letting the premises in the open market (at the review date on the same lease). Does that mean that the majority of commercial properties are underlet? Not necessarily. It depends on how the rent has been negotiated. Where the rent has been negotiated by agreement, it doesn’t matter what the parties agree. When you know how to negotiate, it is generally possible to achieve more by agreeement than would otherwise be possible.

An example of negotiation par excellence is acting for a landlord where your opposite number is an in-house surveyor of a multiple retailer. An in-house surveyor’s job is to minimise the retailer’s property costs. They want the landlord’s surveyor to provide evidence so that they can find fault with it. It is in the same vein as a trained salesperson wanting to know your reason for deciding against buying something so the salesperson can talk you out of it.

In my experience, the only way to defeat a negotiating stance contrary to one’s objective is to remove negotiation from the equation.

(2026 Sep: LinkedIn) – Thanks to the furore surrounding the proposal to ban upward-only rent review, we were reminded that the idea of ‘upward-only’ was originated by institutional landlords during the early 1970s. Possibly, inspired by the basis typical of pre-1970 leases with their pre-fixed uplifts every 7 years.

Makes sense to be certain that an open market rent agreed at one review would not fall at the next review. Strictly, an open market rent on review can go down. As generations of private investors have discovered, upward-only is nothing to do with valuation. It’s the rent payable after the review is agreed or ascertained. Unlike landlords that invest other people’s money, private investors can’t afford to risk borrowings: fear of breaching the loan-to-value covenant haunts. Thinking of property as a long-term investment is challenging. No increase at one review does not mean no increase at the next review, especially where it’s only because of timing that the review has missed out. But, as a novice landlord remarked, after I’d said his looking forward to an increase wasn’t going to happen, the review date too soon to participate, but he could look forward to an increase in 5 years’ time, “what good is that to me?” A reversionary investment is no benefit if you don’t want to sell. 

Institutional landlords, pension funds, are selling a financial product. To demonstrate performance in the shop investment market, they require rental and capital growth, To ensure their choice would at least hold its purchase price, come what may. Rental growth to pay directors, managers, advisers, with some left over for pensionners. Having convinced thousands of savers that 6% per annum growth is reasonable, ok to begin with, no competition. Gradually juggling cash-flow into a chronicle of excuses. 

My opinion that the decline of the ‘high street’ is a consequence of the cumulative knock-on effect of comparable evidence driving out the established retailers whose prescence was the attraction for footfall – the departing retailers taking their customers with them to the better-value-for-money retail parks and at least one of the top 20 shopping centres as measured by property costs – fails to address the deeper cause. 

The institutional pension fund ownership of prime positions, high-networth investors, insistence upon the highest rent at review, ‘high streets’ cleansed of independents, preference for covenant, has handed the balance of power to multiple retailers that, for all their attractions as investment covenants, can up sticks and relocate or use CVA to stay where they are. 

In my view, institutional pension funds should stick to stocks and shares, as should amateur private investors. Obvious that buying shares in a bank, for example, means going in the same direction as the bank, unlike buying into a high street only to find the trading position declines when the bank closes a branch. 

(2026-Aug: LinkedIn) Details of any transaction ‘subject to contract’ are best outlined in Heads of Terms. Although deals can be agreed verbally, brief details passed to the lawyers to deal with (presupposing parties not into d-i-y), lawyers left to their own devices comes under the heading of ‘high risk’.

In my experience, surveyors tend to separate their role from documentation. But a document doesn’t have to involve lawyers to be legally-binding. For example, memorandum for rent review. My wording, approved by two solicitors, has stood the test of time. I’ve lost count of the number of memos drafted by surveyors for my approval where I’ve ended up drafting the memo myself. I have prepared a gentleman’s agreement and numerous side letters.

Under the RICS Code for leasing business premises, Feb 2020, things to put in HoTs as a minimum are ok. But the Code does not differentiate between service charge and maintenance charge. In my view, unnecessary to state whether the lease is inside or ‘outside’ LTA54: by default all business tenancies are inside LTA54. ‘Outside the Act’ ia bad habit – correctly it is excludes sections 24-28.

Having satisfied the RICS HoT minimum, in my experience, surveyors generally abandon their client to the lawyers and do the client disservice. If client is lucky, then lawyers would consult the client’s surveyor, but when? Many lawyers are possessive, whether instructed or not they assume conduct of the matter. They take instructions from the client. Who knows best? The client, the lawyer, the client’s surveyor(if any)? Answer depends upon the effect of wording on asset management policy, rent review and renewal of the ’new’ lease.

Landlords allowing the tenant’s solicitors to draft the lease is asking for trouble. Tempting saving on costs, tenants slip nuances in wording of rent review. The landlord none the wiser until the first rent review is dealt with by a surveyor well-versed in business tenancy law and valuation.

My approach to documentation is HoT in detail, often several pages – longest I’ve done was 16 pages. Acting for the landlord, the client’s solicitor sends me the draft documentation for comment and approval before despatching it to the tenant’s solicitor. Acting for the tenant, the client’s solicitor sends me the draft for my comment before the solicitor starts on it. Any amendments material or seemingly immaterial are checked with me beforehand. The solicitor treats me as the ‘client’ for matters arising; time-saving for the client on decisions within my knowledge. The finalised version sent to me before engrossment to ensure all in order.

I provide solicitors with professional support to ensure the valuation intention at rent review. Despite templates, a failure to modify to suit the circumstances leads to all manner of issues. Jokers abound: a favourite, I should think, amongst third parties is to find the award or determination is expected within a week or so of appointment. 

LinkedIn – 1,542 views

(2025 May); (Update 2026 Aug, LinkedIn) – A director (according to Practical Law) is “a person elected by the members of a company or otherwise appointed to superintend the management of the company’s affairs. Although company directors are not strictly speaking trustees, they are in a closely analogous position because of the fiduciary duties they typically owe to the company.”

In my opinion, what a director is not is someone who clearly isn’t a director in the true legal sense, but has been given a pretentious title to give the impression to the outside world that the person is somehow more important than he/she is.

Some years ago, a chartered surveyor so-called director of Savills made a remark in an email to me that I decided was offensive, so I made a formal complaint to the RICS. As you may know, the RICS doesn’t deal with complaints. Instead, it refers the complainant to the firm concerned to resolve. So I wrote to the proper CEO of Savills. One of his colleagues, in his apology, confirmed that the so-called director wasn’t a proper director and wasn’t authorised to make executive decisions. The so-called director also apologised and that was that. Later, when I informed the RICS of the outcome, the RICS again wasn’t interested.

I am a non-executive director of a limited company whose two directors are a commercial property agent and a chartered surveyor. I am also the director of two different unrelated limited companies. So if I wanted to boost my standing in the outside world, I could legitimately call myself a director.

Currently, for a rent review referral in which I am acting for the landlord, I am drafting my Reply to the tenant’s expert witness (“EW”) chartered surveyor’s Report. In his Report, EW says he is a director of (company name). So, naturally, I checked on Companies House and he isn’t. Therefore, it’s a lie which immediately contradicts his Statement of Truth.

I suggest that executive directors of firms of surveyors, whose habit of dishing out fancy titles that misrepresent their legal status, should remember that there are people in the real world who, when they want to know with whom they’re dealing and what they’re up against, would, as I do, check whether what they’re being told is true or a lie.

Update (1) “I am a non-executive director of a limited company whose two directors are a commercial property agent and a chartered surveyor. I am also the director of two different unrelated limited companies.” I have since resigned as a non-executive director. I have also voluntarily dissolved one of the different unrelated companies. I continue to be a director of the other unrelated company.

Update (2) In May 2025, I posted (on LinkedIn) my opinion that a firm calling a surveyor a ‘director’ when clearly the person isn’t in the true legal sense, but has been given a pretentious title to give the impression to the outside world that the person is somehow more important than he/she is.

A typical reason is to give the person status, to avoid having to give them a pay rise. 

On referral for rent review where the other side’s surveyor, after having been negotiator, acts as expert witness, it is usual for the surveyor to present their credentials. Credibility for an expert witness is an essential ingredient in being taken seriously. To state ‘director’ without actually holding a directorship position – authorised to make executive decisions that bind the company – may mislead clients and the public. 

The misrepresentation can be considered a breach of RICS professional standards, and may lead to disciplinary action under the rules of conduct, including fixed penalties, fines, conditions on practice, or expulsion from membership. The title ‘director’ implies a governance role that comes with specific responsibilities and compliance with RICS rules of conduct. The RICS monitors compliance to ensure that members uphold the highest ethical standards. Honesty and integrity in professional dealings. 

There’s more to it than that. Even if someone is not officially appointed as a director, if they are deemed by law to be a “de facto director” they may still be held accountable if they are presented as such. They could face the same legal responsibilities and liabilities as formally-appointed directors, subject to the same statutory and fiduciary duties, and the same potential civil and criminal penalties, as registered directors. And by representing the company, the person’s decisions and statements can bind the company, and lose the protection of professional indemnity insurance.

Generally, where a person is not a director in the strict sense, but simply in a managerial position, then for compliance with RICS professional standards, and in the eyes of the law, and credibility as an expert witness, the person should say so. Better to tell the truth than hope to get away with lying, a false statement.

There’s the rub: chartered surveyors are so used to dealing with other chartered surveyors at rent review that they don’t expect for one moment their ‘own’ would do anything about it. Especially amongst those chartered surveyors that take things personally and prefer to court popularity than risk a falling-out. Even third parties in procedural directions warning that breach of the RICS PS would be reported probably don’t. Simply, it’s not the done thing. 

The obvious solution is for a proper director to undertake the role of expert witness and not delegate it to make-believe. 

(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.

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)