Recently, I helped 2 women attain an office lease in Austin, they are both getting into the insurance business.  Commercial office leases can be overhwhelming to say the least, you can figure about 14 pages or so of legalize and terms that are not so easy to understand.

As a commercial real estate broker, I provide a service to review the lease terms and conditions as part of the agreement I have with all of my clients. Although, I review the leases to see if the standard terms and conditions are in place, I am not allowed by law to offer any legal advice to my clients. In accordance with the legal and ethics rules instituted by the Texas Real Estate Commssion (TREC), a real estate agent or broker is not allowed to draft legal language or offer legal advice.

So you may ask what is going to cost if I hire an attorney to review my lease. Quite honestly, unless something just doesn't look right or is very quirky, you probably won't have to hire an attorney. As a rule of thumb though, I always leave that up to my client. How much will it cost, a good Commercial Real Estate attorney in Austin will run you $250 an hour to review a document. The client I spoke of earlier, invested $450 for piece of mind. Keep in mind , unless you have a friend who is an attorney in commercial real estate, they probably will not do it for a hours worth of work. If you want peace of mind on an office or warehouse lease document, then perhaps a legal advisor is the best route to go with, just make sure they specialize in commercial real estate.  You also want to make sure they are not being hired to re-write your whole lease which could get very expensive.