How a commercial lease moves from agreed terms to a registered grant, and the title investigation, consents and registrations that secure each party's position along the way.
A lease granted without the right formalities, consents or registrations can leave a tenant holding far less than it bargained for. This chapter starts with the agreement for lease — when it is used, what makes it valid and how a tenant protects it against a buyer of the landlord's title — before turning to the RICS Code for Leasing Business Premises and the risks lurking in unlabelled heads of terms. It then works through deduction and investigation of the landlord's title, including the section 44 limits on what a tenant may call for, the registration rules that fix a lease's legal status, and the engrossment, SDLT and priority-search steps at and after completion. The final sections deal with underleases: how they differ from assignments, the covenants that control underletting, the landlord's statutory duties when consent is sought, and the licence to underlet and direct covenants that record the arrangement.
