Lease concessions for existing retail tenants have evolved sincethe onset of the pandemic. Once hopeful landlords offering leasedeferrals to retail tenants have now been more flexible inincreasing concessions as the pandemic wears on. In some cases thisincludes conditional rent abatement for tenants and new leasedeals.

"In my experience, in the early days of the stay-at-home orderin March and April, rent concessions took the form of limited rentdeferrals of base rent only," Chris Rizza, apartner at Crosbie Gliner Schiffman Southard &Swanson, tells GlobeSt.com. "Tenants were still expectedto pay their triple net lease charges ad landlords would generallyagree to defer one or two months of base rent and have the tenantpay the deferred base rent back without interest over a six to12-month window of time at some point in the future."

As the pandemic has progressed, these concessions have slowlychanged. First in early May, triple-net lease charges started togo. "In early May, those deferrals started to involve NNN charges,"says Rizza. "By late May and into June, the deferralsstarted turning into conditional abatements, if the tenantdefaulted, then they would have to pay back the abated amount ofrent, but if the tenant did not default for a certain period oftime, the rent would eventually be forgiven."