The lease clause leaves my landlord entity holding nothing
The clause I got stuck on last night says the tenant operating company "shall maintain all licenses and approvals required for the permitted use," and then five pages later says that at lease expiration or termination, all licenses, resident agreements and care records remain the sole property of the tenant.
Read together, that means my landlord entity would own a 3,000 square foot house with a fire alarm panel, a hard-wired call system and a bathroom built for a wheelchair, and no legal ability to house a single resident the day the operator hands back the keys. In most states the assisted living license attaches to the operator and the specific address, and transferring it involves a new application rather than an assignment, so I can't assume I inherit anything. That varies state by state and it needs a healthcare attorney licensed where the house sits to read it, which I've started arranging.
The numbers, since they matter to the question: house at 480k, rent to the operating company at 6,500 a month, debt service around 2,900. On paper that coverage looks comfortable. It looks a lot less comfortable if the building can sit dark for eight months waiting on a new applicant's license.
So what I'm actually trying to draft is the fallback. Something that names a backup operator, or gives my entity the right to be added as a co-applicant, or holds a deposit sized to a re-licensing gap instead of one month's rent. I don't know what's normal and what a real operator would laugh at. If you've signed one of these from either side, what did the exit language actually say?