A tenant who gets a nasty surprise at rent review may find, to his great relief, that his lease gives him an option to break, exercisable within a month or two of the final determination.
In theory, such an option should also be useful to the tenant where the market has fallen over the previous rent period and the review can proceed only on an upwards-only basis. In practice, however, as demonstrated in Johnsons of London Ltd v Protec Trust Management [2000] EGCS 114, the chance to exercise the option is unlikely to arise if the review can be initiated only by the landlord and the landlord (sensibly) decides not to send a trigger notice. According to the clause considered in that case, the option clock could not start ticking unless and until a determination had taken place.
That said, it should be emphasised that a tenant in the above circumstances should not write off the chance of getting out of an over-rented property before his advisers have carefully compared the relevant clause with the precise words that were argued over at some length in Johnsons.
A tenant who gets a nasty surprise at rent review may find, to his great relief, that his lease gives him an option to break, exercisable within a month or two of the final determination.
In theory, such an option should also be useful to the tenant where the market has fallen over the previous rent period and the review can proceed only on an upwards-only basis. In practice, however, as demonstrated in Johnsons of London Ltd v Protec Trust Management [2000] EGCS 114, the chance to exercise the option is unlikely to arise if the review can be initiated only by the landlord and the landlord (sensibly) decides not to send a trigger notice. According to the clause considered in that case, the option clock could not start ticking unless and until a determination had taken place.
That said, it should be emphasised that a tenant in the above circumstances should not write off the chance of getting out of an over-rented property before his advisers have carefully compared the relevant clause with the precise words that were argued over at some length in Johnsons.
