Commercial lease key dates: tracking reviews, breaks and expiries

Most failures in property management are visible: the leak, the lift outage, the late reconciliation. Missed lease dates are the opposite, silent and far more expensive. A rent review not triggered is money the landlord never sees. A break notice served a day late is a tenant locked in, or a landlord's disposal strategy dead for five more years. An expiry that arrives unnoticed is a negotiation started from behind.

This guide covers the dates that matter, the mechanics around each, and how to build a tracking discipline that doesn't depend on one person's memory.

The dates that matter

Rent review dates

The date from which the reviewed rent runs, typically every five years on an open-market, upward-only review, though indexed (RPI/CPI) reviews with caps and collars are increasingly common.

The mechanics managers must know per lease:

• Is time of the essence? Usually it is not for review machinery, meaning a review can often be triggered late and backdated, but specific drafting can make deadlines strict, and assuming the general rule is how reviews get lost
• Trigger machinery. Some reviews operate automatically; others require notices, sometimes with response windows
• Backdating and interest. A late-agreed review usually runs from the review date, with interest on the shortfall; tenants need warning of that liability, and accounts need the accrual
• Indexed reviews need the index publication tracked and the calculation evidenced: arithmetic, but auditable arithmetic

A review left dormant isn't neutral. On an upward-only review in a rising market, every month of drift is recoverable but strains the tenant relationship when it lands as a lump. In a flat market, an unactioned review may simply never be worth triggering, which is a decision to record, not an omission to discover later.

Break options

The highest-stakes dates in the portfolio, because break conditions are construed strictly and the courts show no mercy on them.

Track, per break:

• The break date and, more importantly, the notice deadline (commonly 6–12 months prior; the real deadline is the notice date, not the break date)
• Who holds the break: tenant, landlord, or mutual
• The conditions. Typical tenant-break conditions: vacant possession (or the more modest "no continuing underleases/occupiers"), all principal rent paid, sometimes all sums paid. Case law is a graveyard of breaks defeated by a few pounds of unpaid interest or an apportionment argument, so a tenant client should be advised to overpay and reclaim rather than litigate a shortfall
• Service requirements: on whom, at what address, by what method. Get the notice provisions exactly right; "it arrived" is not the test, "it was served per clause X" is

For landlords, every approaching tenant break is also an asset-management event. Nine months out is when the retention conversation, the regear proposal or the marketing plan starts, not when the notice lands.

Expiry and renewal

Whether expiry is an ending or a formality depends on the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954:

• Inside the Act (security of tenure): the tenancy continues after the contractual expiry until ended by the statutory procedures, either a landlord's s.25 notice (proposing renewal terms or opposing on statutory grounds) or a tenant's s.26 request. Timing rules (6–12 months' notice) and counter-notice deadlines apply, and opposed renewals need grounds evidenced well in advance
• Contracted out: the tenancy ends at expiry with no renewal right, which makes the expiry date a hard cliff for the tenant's occupation and the landlord's income alike. The contracting-out documentation (declaration or statutory declaration) should be on file and checkable

Either way, the working backstop is the same: expiries go on the radar at least 12 months out, for the renewal strategy, the reletting plan, the dilapidations assessment, and the service charge implications of a potential void.

The supporting cast

• Rent-free and stepped-rent end dates: the demand run must change on the right day
• Option dates: options to renew, expand, purchase; usually strict
• Turnover rent certifications and reporting deadlines
• Licence and consent expiries: temporary alterations, short-term uses
• Guarantor and deposit events: release triggers, top-up obligations
• Insurance and compliance renewals: not lease events strictly, but they belong on the same calendar
• Post-expiry continuity: service charge reconciliation and dilapidations run beyond the term, and the tenant file stays live for many months after the tenant leaves

Building the tracking discipline

The failure mode is always the same: dates live in individual spreadsheets, or one senior surveyor's memory, and the system works until the person leaves or the portfolio grows. The fix is structural:

1. One source of truth. Every lease abstracted to a single dataset: parties, term, rent, review dates and mechanism, breaks with notice deadlines and conditions, 1954 Act status, incentives. The abstract is checked against the signed lease, not the heads of terms.

2. Lead times, not dates. A break date in the diary is useless; the alert you need is at the decision horizon. Sensible defaults: breaks flagged at notice-deadline-minus-3-months (so 9–15 months before the break date), reviews at 6 months, expiries at 12, with escalation if unactioned.

3. Dates plus obligations. The alert must carry the conditions and the service mechanics with it. A reminder that says "break: 24 June" without "notice by 24 December, conditional on all sums paid, serve on registered office by recorded delivery" has done half the job.

4. Actions recorded. Every triggered event gets an owner and an outcome: review triggered or parked (and why), break exercised or lapsed, renewal strategy set. The decision trail is what protects you when the question comes years later.

5. Independence from individuals. The test of the system: could a new property manager inherit the portfolio tomorrow and miss nothing? If the honest answer is no, the dates are being carried by people, not process.

This is precisely the gap SweetLease closes: the portfolio-wide lease dataset with event tracking, condition-aware alerts and a decision log, on the same data layer as the service charge and maintenance tools. One dataset, every date, no memory required.

The cost of getting it wrong: a quick audit

For any portfolio you manage or are about to take over, three questions:

1. Can you produce, today, a list of every break notice deadline in the next 18 months, with conditions?
2. Are there rent reviews past their review date with no recorded decision to trigger or park?
3. Which expiries in the next 12 months have no renewal or reletting strategy attached?

If any answer is uncomfortable, that's the priority, ahead of any budget, any tender, any report. Nothing else in the management file loses money as quietly.