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Timothy Smith, a partner in the firm’s Real Estate and Finance practice, published “Identifying Issues in Portfolios Can Help Prevent Lease Defaults” in Banker & Tradesman on July 28. The article discusses the increase in commercial lease defaults and offers landlords advice on how to avoid costly mistakes. Tim points out that Massachusetts law is not friendly to landlords, placing strong limitations on the actions that landlords, both residential and commercial, can take to protect themselves in the event that a tenant defaults on a lease. He suggests that landlords require a significant security deposit to keep a defaulting tenant’s attention, evaluate the credit of the tenant at the outset of the lease and in a default situation, and include provisions in the lease that impose late charges and deny certain rights to tenants that have been in monetary default.