Read the Lease, Not the Summary.

Somewhere in most sale packs, there's a tidy paragraph about the premises. Rent, term, a line about "favourable terms." It reads well. It's also not the lease.

The summary and the document are not the same thing.

We've seen sale packs describe a lease as having "several years remaining," when the actual document showed a break clause eighteen months out, at the landlord's sole discretion. That's not a rounding error. That's the difference between buying a stable trading location and buying an eighteen-month countdown you didn't know you'd started.

What's actually worth checking.

The real remaining term, including any break clauses and who can exercise them. Whether rent reviews are due, and what direction they're likely to move in. Whether the lease is assignable to you at all, or whether the landlord has to consent, and on what terms. And whether there are repair or dilapidation obligations sitting quietly in the small print that will land on your desk the day you take over, not the seller's.

Why this matters more for a lettings agency than it looks like it should.

An agency's premises aren't just an office. They're part of how landlords and tenants find the business, part of the trading name's local credibility, and often part of what the sale price is actually reflecting. A short, shaky lease on a great high-street position isn't the same asset as a long, secure one, even if the sale particulars describe them almost identically.

The fix is unglamorous but effective.

Get the actual lease. Read it, or better, have someone whose job it is to read leases read it. Ask the questions the one-paragraph summary was never going to answer.

It's a small step that takes a fraction of the time due diligence usually requires, and it's the difference between knowing exactly what you're standing on and finding out the hard way.

That's what we do at Russou.