Commercial Lease Review: What to Check Before You Sign (or Abstract)
A complete guide to commercial lease review for CRE professionals. What to check, which clauses carry the most risk, and how AI accelerates the review process.
Review subleases with confidence using Lextract. Extract and compare sublease terms against the master lease. Verify compliance with consent, transfer, and use restrictions.
Sublease transactions require reviewing both the sublease agreement and the master lease to ensure compliance. The subtenant needs to verify that the sublease terms are permissible under the master lease, that consent requirements are met, and that the sublease does not expose them to risks from the master lease — like a landlord recapture right or restrictive transfer provisions. Manually cross-referencing two lengthy documents is time-intensive and easy to get wrong.
Lextract processes both the master lease and the sublease as separate documents, extracting 126 fields from each. This allows immediate comparison of the sublease terms against the master lease restrictions. Transfer provisions — consent standards, recapture rights, profit sharing, permitted transferees, and continuing liability — are all extracted from the master lease, making it clear what the sublease must comply with. Red flag detection highlights provisions in either document that create elevated risk.
Manual Process
6-10 hours for both documents
With Lextract
5–15 minutes
Time Saved
94–97% time reduction
Upload Both Documents
Upload the master lease and the sublease agreement as separate documents. Each is extracted independently.
Review Transfer Provisions
Examine the master lease extraction for consent requirements, recapture rights, profit sharing obligations, and continuing liability provisions.
Compare Sublease Terms
Cross-reference sublease rent, term, and use restrictions against what the master lease permits.
Identify Compliance Gaps
Flag any sublease terms that may conflict with or exceed the master lease permissions.
Lextract extracts both documents to the same 126-field schema, making comparison straightforward. You receive two structured abstracts that can be reviewed side by side. The system does not perform automated compliance checking, but the structured data makes manual comparison fast and thorough.
The critical master lease provisions for sublease review are: consent standard (sole discretion vs. reasonable consent), recapture right, profit sharing percentage, permitted transferee definitions, continuing liability, and any use restrictions that may limit what a subtenant can do.
Lextract extracts expiration dates and lease terms from both documents. Comparing these fields will immediately reveal if the sublease term extends beyond the master lease expiration.
A complete guide to commercial lease review for CRE professionals. What to check, which clauses carry the most risk, and how AI accelerates the review process.
How commercial real estate attorneys use lease abstraction to deliver faster client work, identify risks, and reduce time spent on data extraction.
A comprehensive checklist for tenants subleasing commercial space, covering consent requirements, recapture rights, profit splits, liability, and holdover provisions.
Upload your lease PDF and get 126 structured fields extracted in minutes. Perfect for sublease review. Just $15 per lease.
Upload Your Lease