Anyone actually read lease abstracts cover to cover before a retail acquisition closes, or just the summary sheet?
Asking because I've been in the servicing world, not ownership, and the stuff I see go wrong almost never shows up in the summary. I ran payment books for two land sellers on 31 installment contracts and every time something broke it was buried in a clause nobody flagged, a late charge calculation that didn't match the note, a partial payment provision that contradicted state law, something. The abstract exists because somebody decided the full document was too much to deal with. I get that. But the abstractor is deciding what matters, and that decision is sitting between you and the actual lease. On the land note side I had one contract where the default cure period in the summary said 30 days and the note itself said 15. Seller didn't know. I only caught it because I was setting up the payment schedule and needed the actual language. On a retail deal with CAM reconciliation clauses, exclusivity carve-outs, co-tenancy triggers, I'd want to know who read the original and what they were looking for when they did.
