Jameson Stone Law drafts and reviews leases across Central Pennsylvania, and Daniel Jameson leads the real estate work. Residential and commercial leases are not versions of the same document. They are governed differently, they fail differently, and using one as a model for the other is how landlords and tenants both end up in trouble.
Two Different Documents
Residential letting is heavily regulated. Deposit amounts are capped by statute, notice periods are set by statute, and a warranty of habitability applies to every residential lease in Pennsylvania whether the document mentions it or not. Much of what a residential lease does is comply with rules you cannot alter, and the drafting question is whether it complies cleanly or creates problems for you later.
Commercial letting is almost the opposite. There is no habitability warranty, deposits are not capped, and confession of judgment clauses are permitted. Both sides largely get whatever they negotiated, which means the document is the deal rather than a record of it. A commercial lease is usually the largest and longest financial commitment a small business ever signs, and most sign the landlord’s standard form without anybody on their side reading it.
Residential
The warranty of habitability was established by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and it cannot be waived. A clause saying the tenant accepts the property as-is is unenforceable in a residential lease, because the duty is imposed by law rather than by agreement. It only reaches serious defects, heat, water, sewage, electrical safety, structural problems and infestation, but within that range it is a live defence to a claim for rent.
Deposit limits work the same way. Two months’ rent in the first year, one month from the second, and no clause in the lease changes that. What a residential landlord can control is narrower than most realise and worth getting right. The lease can waive the statutory notice to quit, which meaningfully shortens an eviction. It can allocate maintenance responsibilities within the limits of the warranty. And it can set out late fees, entry rights and end-of-tenancy obligations clearly enough that they are actually enforceable.
Commercial
Whether the lease is gross, modified gross or triple net decides who pays the taxes, the insurance and the maintenance, and that gap can be a third of the real cost. Common area charges sit alongside it, often uncapped, occasionally with no right to see how they were calculated. A tenant comparing two premises on rent per square foot alone is comparing the wrong number.
Three other terms deserve attention before signing. A personal guarantee, which most commercial landlords ask for and which puts your own assets behind the company’s obligation. A confession of judgment clause, permitted in Pennsylvania commercial leases, which lets the landlord obtain judgment without bringing a case first. And the assignment provision, which decides whether you can transfer the lease if you ever sell the business, and which can quietly make a sale considerably harder.
What We Handle
Drafted to comply properly, with the terms a landlord can control set out clearly.
Negotiating the economics, the guarantee and the exit before the term is committed to.
Going through the landlord's form and identifying which terms are genuinely worth pushing back on.
Option deadlines, rent review mechanisms, and transferring a lease when a business changes hands.
Our Process
01
Residential or commercial, because that decides what is negotiable and what cannot be altered at all.
Who pays what, over how long, and what the total obligation actually comes to across the full term.
Building the document, or going through theirs and flagging what should not be signed as written.
Leases are signed under time pressure, usually because premises are wanted by a certain date. That pressure is why the document gets skimmed, and it is why the terms causing trouble two years later were never discussed by anybody at the outset.
You can, and many landlords do, but the risk is not what people expect. A template will not make the tenancy invalid. What it does is either promise something you did not intend, or fail to include the things you are permitted to control. A lease that does not waive the statutory notice to quit adds weeks to any eviction. One with an as-is clause is relying on a provision that is unenforceable. One that treats the deposit as final month’s rent is not permitted to. Having a form reviewed once, and then using it repeatedly, is a sensible middle path.
The total obligation rather than the rent. Work out whether taxes, insurance and maintenance are on you, what the common area charges have historically been and whether they are capped, and what the figure looks like across the whole term rather than per month. Then the three terms that reach beyond the premises: whether a personal guarantee is being asked for, whether there is a confession of judgment clause, and whether you can assign the lease if you sell the business. Those four things decide what the lease is worth far more than the rent does.
More than most realise on the commercial side, and less than most hope on the residential side. A commercial lease is largely a matter of what you can negotiate. A residential lease sits inside statutory limits on deposits and notice, and a habitability duty that cannot be contracted out of. What is worth doing is spending the effort on the parts you actually control, being precise about maintenance, entry, late payment and the end of the tenancy, rather than including clauses that will not hold up if they are ever tested.
A lease review is a short, contained piece of work. Once it is signed, the guarantee, the cost allocation and the exit terms are all settled for the length of the term, which on a commercial lease can be a decade. Daniel Jameson leads the firm’s real estate work, and the first conversation costs nothing.