The date the tenant is legally obligated to begin paying base rent.
By Angel Campa, Founder · Updated March 2026
The gap between the commencement date and the rent commencement date represents free rent, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars. A tenant with a $25,000/month base rent and a 3-month gap saves $75,000. If this date is extracted incorrectly, the accounting team may begin accruing rent obligations at the wrong time, leading to financial statement errors and strained landlord relationships.
Defined in the "Rent" or "Term" section, usually close to the commencement date definition. In leases with free rent periods, it may be defined as "X months after the Commencement Date" rather than a specific calendar date.
Lextract uses a combination of AWS Textract OCR and Claude AI to identify and extract the rent commencement from your lease PDF. The AI searches for all pages of the document, then assigns a confidence score based on OCR quality and extraction certainty. Fields with lower confidence are flagged for human review.
Execution Date
The date the lease agreement was fully signed by all parties.
Commencement Date
The date the legal term of the lease officially begins.
Expiration Date
The date the lease term naturally concludes without renewal.
Lease Term (Months)
The total duration of the initial lease term expressed in months.
Possession Date
The date the landlord grants the tenant physical access to the space.
Free Rent Period
The duration during which the tenant is excused from paying base rent.
Yes, and it frequently does. Tenants often negotiate a free rent period for build-out, so the lease term may start on January 1 while rent payments do not begin until April 1. During the gap, the tenant typically still pays operating expenses and insurance.
While base rent is typically abated, most leases require the tenant to pay their pro rata share of operating expenses, taxes, and insurance from the commencement date. The free rent period usually applies only to base rent, not additional rent.
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