Lease abstraction, from the lease and every amendment to your abstract, cited field by field.

A new lease, a renewal or a third amendment reaches your lease administrator, often with a guaranty, a work letter, a commencement date letter and a side letter in the same file. Someone reads it all, works out which document now controls each term, and fills in your abstract: dates, the rent table, options and notice windows, recovery terms, and clauses that limit what the landlord may do elsewhere in the property. Then it is keyed into the lease system and the critical-dates calendar.

For the test, AI does that on copies of leases your team already abstracted. It drafts each abstract in your template, quotes the clause behind every field with its section and page, and lists every place where two documents disagree. We call it the sandbox. Nothing is keyed anywhere.

The latest document wins, field by field. A first amendment may extend the term and reset the base year, a second may add a suite with its own rent table, and a commencement date letter may move every date in the original lease. The abstract has to show the lease as amended and say which document set each value. Where two documents conflict, or an amendment points to a section that no longer exists, the draft lists both readings instead of choosing. A Jackson & Campbell note on SNDAs warns that an amendment the lender never signed off on may not bind the lender, so the draft marks amendments dated after an SNDA.

Square footage has a pedigree. Leases measure rentable area under a named BOMA standard. A Hall Render note on the 2010 office edition explained that it offers Method A, a load factor worked out floor by floor, and Method B, one load factor for every floor, and that a lease citing it has to say which applies. Older leases may cite earlier editions. The draft records rentable and usable area, the standard and method as written and any right to remeasure, since recovery shares start there.

Rent steps feed the accountant as well as the bill. The rent table, free months, abatements and the date each step begins have to match the lease exactly. PwC's lease accounting guide says a lessor recognizes rent from an operating lease on a straight-line basis even when the steps track expected market rents, and records an unbilled rent receivable for the gap between that income and the rent billed. So the draft lays the schedule out month by month from the actual commencement date and flags steps that hang on an event, such as a suite's delivery.

Retail clauses reach past the premises. An exclusive in one lease can bar the landlord from leasing to a competing use anywhere in the center, with carve-outs for existing tenants or anchors. A co-tenancy clause can tie full rent to named anchors or to a share of the center being open, give the landlord a cure period and offer remedies such as reduced rent, a delayed opening or termination; Cox, Castle & Nicholson adds a return to full rent or a landlord recapture right when a violation goes uncured. Percentage rent starts above a breakpoint: the natural one is annual base rent divided by the percentage rate, an artificial one a negotiated sales figure. The draft quotes each clause whole, because a one-line summary is where they go wrong.

The abstract is what everyone else reads. Renewal, expansion and termination options carry notice windows that are lost once missed. An estoppel asks the tenant to confirm its premises and square footage, term, amendments, options and first rights, rent, deposit, any sublease or assignment, its share of taxes and CAM and any claims against the landlord, so those fields must match the lease as amended. Your reviewer, usually the lease administrator who owns your template, will look hardest at notice dates, rent steps and recovery terms.

With your reviewer's yes, new leases, renewals and amendments for the buildings you pick run through the job for about 30 days.

Each draft waits for your lease administrator to correct and approve it before anything is keyed into your lease system or added to the critical-dates calendar. Notices to tenants and lenders stay with your team. No second job starts that month.