Critical to the concept of a lease of commercial property as an investment product is the contractual obligation on the tenant to pay the landlord a rent on a quarterly basis. Failure to make such payments on time entitles a landlord to terminate the lease, by forfeiture, to make the tenant insolvent or to execute distraint on goods owned by the tenant at the let premises up to the value of the unpaid rent. In the majority of cases, just the threat of taking such action is sufficient to recover rent arrears.
COVID-19: mitigation
In an effort to mitigate the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government has intervened quickly and materially to impose regulation on the, previously largely unregulated, economic relationship between landlords and their tenants by:
- preventing a landlord from exercising a right of re-entry or forfeiture for non-payment of rent (Coronavirus Act 2020, s 82(1));
- preventing the service or presentation of a statutory demand (The Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020); and
- restricting the right to distrain
