Did My Commercial Landlord Commit A Crime?
Due to an ownership change, I have a new Landlord for my restaurant space who decided to increase all the NNN charges and claimed that everything was done legally according to the lease. After about 2 years I find out that some of these increases are not allowed according to my lease and I'm wondering whether it was even illegal for them to over bill me on some of these charges. The biggest increase was the property tax component and it turns out that they over billed me by more than twice the amount that they actually paid to the state. According to my lease, they can bill me estimates but at the end of every year, they need to reconcile these estimates to what they actually paid to the state. They presented me with year end reconciliation bills that showed an over inflated tax number for the 2 parcels that are used to calculate my share of property taxes. They kept on saying that due to ownerchip change, the property value will be re-assessed so they were pre billing me for this expected increase. Well that wasn't allowed in the lease so for 2022 and 2023 they should have only billed me what they paid to the state. In Nov 2024 the reassessment finally happened and the new tax was only about 10 percent more, not more than doubled. They probably knew what the new tax bill was but decided to overcharge me anyway. This over charge alone would have costed me close to 100k over the duration of the lease. To me it looks like the landlord was trying to steal from me and should be punished by either or both a large fine and prison sentence. However, I realize that they are a large corporation and probably wouldnt try this unless they can get away with this easily.
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