A review date nobody saw coming
It usually surfaces sideways. The asset manager is updating the rent roll for the lender and notices the rent on unit 4 has not changed since the lease started, though the lease had a five-yearly upward-only review that fell due last spring. Nobody served anything. Nobody opened a conversation with the tenant. The review is still there to be done, but it is now late, the evidence is harder to assemble and the tenant has had a year to get comfortable at the old figure.
In a small portfolio the dates are in someone's head, a diary and a spreadsheet tab called Lease Events. In a larger one they are in the property management system, but only if someone keyed them in correctly when the lease was completed, and only if someone reads the report.
Why the dates drift
The obvious answer is that people are busy. The real cause is that a rent review is not one date. It is a date, a basis (open market, index-linked, fixed uplift), sometimes a trigger notice, sometimes time limits the lease makes important, and a chain of steps that follow. A diary entry holds one of those things. The rest stays in a 60-page PDF.
- Review dates were keyed by hand when each lease completed, and some were never keyed at all.
- Leases acquired with a building arrived as scanned bundles, and nobody abstracted them.
- Side letters and deeds of variation changed a date, but the diary still shows the old one.
- The reminder goes to whoever set it up, who may have moved to another portfolio.
- There is no view of reviews in progress, so an opened review can stall for months.
Whether a date is critical, and what has to happen by when, is a question for your surveyor or solicitor. The system's job is to make sure the question gets asked in good time.
What a missed review costs you
The immediate cost is rent you were entitled to ask for and did not. The quieter costs follow. Valuers and lenders read your rent roll and see passing rents that look stale. Late reviews are harder to evidence because the comparables have moved on. Your surveyor gets instructed in a rush. And the tenant relationship gets awkward when a review that should have been routine arrives as a surprise backdated conversation.
The lease event tracker we build
- We abstract each lease, including side letters and variations, into structured fields: review dates, basis, notice requirements you flag, caps and collars, and any upward-only wording. AI extraction does the first pass on the documents and a person checks every field against the source page, which is linked beside it.
- Each review becomes a record with its own timeline, working back from the review date to the warning points your team sets.
- Warnings go to a named owner and a deputy by email or Microsoft Teams, and they escalate if nobody opens the review.
- Once opened, the review moves through stages you define: evidence gathered, surveyor instructed, proposal sent, agreed or referred, memorandum signed.
- When the new rent is agreed, the tracker updates the rent roll and flags the next demand run so the uplift and any back rent are billed.
- A weekly summary lists reviews due, reviews stalled at a stage and reviews overdue, by building and by owner.
| Review step | How it runs now | With the tracker |
|---|---|---|
| Knowing a review is due | Diary or memory | Warned early, with the lease clause attached |
| Knowing the basis | Reopen the lease PDF | Held as a field, linked to the page |
| Following progress | Email threads | Stage per review, visible to the team |
| Recording the outcome | Memorandum filed, rent roll updated later | Rent roll and billing updated from the agreed figure |
| Spotting stalls | Nobody does | Weekly list of reviews stuck at a stage |
If you already run a property management system that holds lease events, we connect to it and feed it rather than building a second copy of the lease data.
How the week changes
The asset manager opens one list and sees what is coming in the next year, what is open and what has stalled. Reviews start when your process says they should, with the lease clause already on screen. When a new rent is agreed it reaches the next quarter's demand without anyone remembering to tell accounts. And the next time the lender asks for the tenancy schedule, the passing rents are current.
Signs your reviews are at risk
- Review dates live in a spreadsheet or diary that one person maintains.
- You have bought buildings whose leases were never fully abstracted.
- You have found a review months after it fell due.
- Nobody can say how many reviews are open right now.
- Agreed rents take a quarter or more to reach the demands.