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How to check an AI-made lease abstract
AI can abstract a lease in minutes. Often it’s close. When it’s wrong, it looks exactly the same. Here is how to check an abstract, whoever made it, in the order that catches the most mistakes for the least effort.
The short version. Don’t ask the AI whether it got it right. Hold the abstract against the lease and every amendment: find each term on its page, as the latest document left it, and look for what the abstract leaves out. For why these mistakes happen, see Twelve mistakes AI makes in lease abstracts when nobody checks.
Plan for the time it takes. A lease with its amendments, riders and side letters can run to a hundred pages or more, and every term has to be found as the latest document changed it. These ten checks find the worst mistakes, but checking every term by hand can take hours for each lease, and a building can have dozens.
1. Every document is there
Gather the lease and every amendment, rider, side letter and guaranty. Then read the opening paragraphs of each amendment: they often list the documents before it. If one is named that you don’t have, get it before you check anything else. Do this one first: a missing amendment makes every term it changed wrong, and no other check will show it.
2. Each term is the latest document’s
Put the documents in the order they were signed, not the order of their file names. For each term an amendment changed, the abstract should show the amendment, not the lease as signed. A term that names the original lease when a later amendment rewrote it is out of date.
3. Every term is on the page it cites
Open each cited page and find the words. The term should be there, in that section. Words shown as the lease’s own should be the lease’s, not a summary in the lease’s style. A term you can’t find where the abstract says is a term you can’t rely on.
4. Nothing is filled in that the lease doesn’t say
For every option, deposit, cap and allowance on the abstract, find the clause that gives it. Anything you can’t find was assumed. Some leases simply don’t have a renewal option, and the abstract should say none.
5. Nothing the lease gives is left off
Go through the lease’s table of contents, its riders, its exhibits and every side letter, and look for rights: renewal, termination, expansion, first offer or first refusal, exclusives, co-tenancy, caps on expenses and relocation. Each one should be on the abstract. Note what amendments delete, too: a right deleted in 2022 shouldn’t still be there.
6. The parties are the right ones
Check the tenant’s exact name in the latest document, the guarantor and what the guaranty covers, and the landlord today, after any sale. Then check the notice addresses against the last document that changed them. Notice sent to an old address may not count.
7. The rent schedule runs from start to finish
Every period should follow the one before it, with no gap and no overlap, from the commencement date to the expiration as amended. Each step should land on the date the lease gives, the monthly rent times twelve should be the annual rent, and any free rent should be shown in the months it falls.
8. Every date is worked out again
Take the expiration as amended and work out each notice date yourself from the lease’s own words, such as “not less than twelve nor more than fifteen months before the expiration.” Compare it with the abstract’s date. A date counted from the old expiration can be years off.
9. The area, base year and share are the latest
When space is added or given back, the area changes, and often the share of expenses and the base year with it. Check each against the last document that set it, space by space.
10. Scanned figures match the page
On a scanned page, a 6 and an 8, or a 1 and a 7, are easy to confuse. Leases often write an amount in words and in figures, like “Eight Thousand Two Hundred Fifty Dollars ($8,250.00).” Check that the abstract’s figure matches both.
One warning: an abstract can pass a spot check and still be wrong, because the term you didn’t check may be the one an amendment changed. That’s why the first checks cover every document and every amendment.
A quick checklist
- Every document is there, and none the amendments name is missing.
- Each term is the latest document’s, in signing order.
- Every term is on the page it cites, in the lease’s own words.
- Nothing is filled in that the lease doesn’t say.
- Nothing the lease gives is left off, and nothing deleted is still there.
- The parties and notice addresses are the right ones.
- The rent schedule runs from start to finish, with no gap.
- Every date is worked out again from the lease’s words.
- The area, base year and share are the latest.
- Scanned figures match the page, in words and in figures.