When a Commercial Tenant Stops Paying Rent: What Florida Property Owners Should Know About Their Options

When a Commercial Tenant Stops Paying Rent: What Florida Property Owners Should Know About Their Options

If you own commercial property in Florida and lease it to a business tenant, one scenario should shape how you write and enforce your lease: the tenant stops paying, stays in the space, and dares you to do something about it. You keep covering the mortgage, the property taxes, and the insurance on a building you cannot re-lease, because someone else's name is still on the lease. Meanwhile, the tenant treats the delay itself as leverage.

A recovery reported out of Los Angeles puts a dollar figure on that problem, and while the venue was California, the shape of the exposure is familiar to any Florida landlord.

What was reported

According to a press release attributed to Los Angeles eviction attorney Niv V. Davidovich and distributed via Newswire.com, a national fitness chain leasing commercial space in Los Angeles declined to pay rent and did not meet its broader lease obligations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The release states that the matter resulted in $2.2 million secured against the tenant.

Two caveats matter before anyone reads too much into that number. First, the account comes from the recovering attorney's own office, not from independent court reporting or a neutral news outlet, so it should be read as one interested party's summary of a matter it litigated. Second, the release does not say whether the $2.2 million came through a court judgment, a settlement, or another negotiated resolution, and it does not break the figure down between back rent, default damages, and attorney's fees. This article treats it as a reported recovery, not as a verified legal outcome or a predictor of what any other case would produce.

Why this matters to you in Florida

California landlord-tenant law is not Florida law, and a reported recovery in Los Angeles tells you nothing about what a Florida court would do with your lease. What carries over is the underlying situation, because it is not unique to California or to the pandemic.

A commercial lease in Florida is a binding contract. When a tenant decides to stop performing and points to an outside event as the reason, a downturn, a claimed hardship, a dispute over the condition of the property, that decision does not by itself erase the landlord's contractual rights. Whether the tenant's stated reason actually excuses performance is a separate question, and it turns on the specific language of the lease, the facts, and Florida law. Some leases contain force majeure or abatement provisions that speak directly to events like a pandemic. Many do not. That difference can matter more than anything else in the file.

The practical problem for owners is timing. Every month a defaulting tenant occupies space is a month of carrying costs with no offsetting rent and no ability to bring in a replacement tenant. Delay is not neutral. It is a cost, and it lands on the owner.

The incentive behind the pattern

The reported case above involves one tenant, and the available reporting comes from the plaintiff's side, so it is not evidence of an industry-wide practice. But it does illustrate a calculation that some well capitalized commercial tenants may be tempted to make.

If breaching a lease is cheaper than complying with it, and if the mechanics of eviction and civil litigation are slow enough, a tenant with counsel and cash reserves can effectively treat the delay as free financing. The landlord is the one who has to sue, wait, and prove damages. The pandemic gave that approach a convenient backdrop, but the incentive predates COVID-19 and will outlast it.

For owners, the takeaway is not about the tenant's motives. It is that waiting rarely improves an owner's position, and that the strength of the lease document itself, particularly its default, notice, acceleration, and attorney's fee provisions, tends to determine how much room an owner has when a default happens.

What Florida law provides

Florida property owners dealing with nonpayment or default generally have remedies available under Florida's landlord-tenant statutes, Chapter 83, Florida Statutes. Commercial tenancies are addressed in Part I of that chapter, and residential tenancies are addressed in Part II, and the rules are not the same. Which part applies to your situation changes the notice you must give and the process you must follow.

Depending on the lease and the facts, remedies can include recovering unpaid rent, pursuing damages tied to the remainder of the lease term, seeking possession of the property, and recovering attorney's fees where the lease or a statute allows for it. Florida law also addresses a landlord's options when a commercial tenant abandons the premises or holds over past the lease term.

None of this is automatic. Florida law generally requires proper written notice before an owner can move forward with eviction, and the required notice period, the available remedies, and the procedural deadlines all depend on the type of tenancy, what the lease says, and the nature of the default. Procedural missteps early on, including a defective notice, can slow a case down or require starting over, which is exactly the delay a defaulting tenant benefits from. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and are never assured.

If you are on the tenant side of a commercial lease and believe your landlord is not meeting its own obligations, or that the default notice you received is inaccurate, those questions are also worth reviewing with counsel. The lease runs in both directions.

Talk to someone about your lease

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every lease and every default is different.

If you are a Florida property owner dealing with a tenant who has stopped paying rent, held over past the lease term, or otherwise defaulted, consider having your lease and your options reviewed by a licensed Florida attorney before the carrying costs pile up. Louis Law Group offers consultations for Florida property owners who want to understand what Florida law may make available to them and what their lease actually says about a default like this one.

Sources

• Los Angeles Eviction Attorney Niv V. Davidovich Secures $2,200,000 Against National Fitness Tenant That Refused Rent Payments and Lease Obligations During COVID-19, Newswire.com (via Google News)