Commercial Lease Application: What Landlords Ask For

A commercial lease application is the packet a landlord uses to decide whether your business, and the person guaranteeing it, can carry the rent for the whole term. Most ask for 4 things: business details, business financials, a personal financial statement from each guarantor, and signed permission to check credit. We read 10 applications that landlords and property managers post online. The forms run 1 to 7 pages, and the attachments are where the time goes.

What is a commercial lease application?

The application and the lease agreement are separate documents, and search results mix them up. An application creates no tenancy. Atlas Properties’ form says “This application is not a contract.” DKR Management’s says no tenancy exists “until a lease is signed and the security deposit is received.”

Send the financials early. A 2023 ICSC legal conference paper on lease security lists “promptly requesting and providing financial information” among the things that shape the deal. Putting the security terms in the first letter of intent is on the same list. A tenant with a finished packet can negotiate the deposit and the guaranty before the lease is drafted.

What 10 real commercial lease applications ask for

We read 10 applications as posted on November 10, 2026. Retail and shopping-center landlords wrote 6 of them, and general commercial property managers wrote 4. The table counts how many forms ask for each item.

The 10 forms:

• Atlas Properties, shopping-center lease application
• CKH, commercial lease application
• Coreland Companies, personal financial statement for shopping-center lease
• DKR Management, commercial lease application
• Equity Management Group, lease application and personal financial statement
• Keyz CRE, commercial lease application (rev. 7/29/2020)
• KPM, application to lease retail space
• NWE Management Company, commercial lease application
• ShopOne Centers, tenant credit checklist and application to lease
• The Retail Companies, tenant application

The personal financial statement is in the standard packet on 9 of the 10. On 7 of those 9 it’s the landlord’s own form or schedule. The other 2 (Keyz and KPM) ask for a personal financial statement and leave the format to you.

Several of the landlord forms are bank forms with a new name on top. The Retail Companies’ statement is given “for the purpose of obtaining credit with you on notes and bills.” ShopOne’s begins “For the purpose of securing credit with you.”

Equity Management Group’s notes that alimony and child support “need not be revealed,” the same kind of notice SBA Form 413 carries. A statement you’ve already prepared for a lender holds the numbers a landlord asks for.

The application, section by section

One example runs through the sections below. A new retail tenant applies for 2,400 square feet at $30 a square foot in base rent plus $8 in pass-through charges. That’s $91,200 a year, or $7,600 a month.

Business information

This section asks for the legal name, trade name, entity type, federal tax ID, date established, and the proposed use of the space. An authorized officer or member of the tenant entity fills it out and signs it.

Use the exact name of the entity that will sign the lease. Landlords check it against state filings. DKR asks for articles of incorporation or organization, KPM for the operating agreement or bylaws, and Atlas for all formation documents.

Business financials

An operating business sends history. DKR asks for the 2 most recent years of business tax returns or year-end statements. Coreland asks for 1 year of profit and loss statements, and Keyz for 3 years of gross receipts.

A new business sends a plan. DKR asks for a business plan and an opening balance sheet. Atlas asks for your start-up costs and then, “From what source of funds will you pay for these costs?” ShopOne asks how you’ll pay for construction, fixturing, and opening “without depending on sales for the first few months.”

Answer those questions with numbers. In the example, the build-out and opening costs total $180,000, paid with $60,000 of the owner’s cash and a $120,000 SBA loan. A landlord reading that line can see the store gets finished.

Principals and guarantors

Each owner or guarantor gives a name, home address, date of birth, Social Security number, ownership share, and income. The individuals fill this in themselves, one block per person.

Keyz asks each principal for “Personal Net Worth Excluding Business Value.” That exclusion makes sense. The landlord is already judging the business from its own financials. The guaranty adds the most when the guarantor has assets outside it.

An owner with a $1,150,000 net worth that includes a $400,000 business reports $750,000 on that line.

Personal financial statement

The personal financial statement lists what the guarantor owns and owes on one date, with schedules behind the totals. Coreland’s opens with “Financial condition as of.” Equity Management Group’s adds schedules for life insurance, closely held stock, vehicles, and real estate, plus a panel for contingent liabilities.

Each guarantor completes one. Equity Management Group’s form lets a married guarantor file jointly with a spouse, and Coreland’s tells a co-applicant to complete separate pages.

Check for 3 mistakes before you send it:

• Totals on page 1 that don’t match the schedules behind them.
• No as-of date, or a signature dated months before the application. Our guide to signature and dating rules covers what lenders expect.
• Guarantees left out. Equity Management Group asks whether you’re “indirectly liable for obligations of others,” and The Retail Companies asks about contingent liabilities “on leases or contracts.”

If the landlord’s package has no form of its own, start from a personal financial statement template and attach a schedule of real estate owned if you hold property.

StatementsReady builds this one part of the packet. It pulls balances through read-only Plaid bank sync, stores no bank credentials, and produces the statement in three PDF layouts. Where the landlord uses its own form, you copy the totals across. It doesn’t produce the lease application, your tax returns, or the business financials.

References

A bank reference or an account list with a contact name is on 7 of the 10 forms. Most also ask for trade references, and DKR asks for a business banking relationship and 2 vendors or suppliers. Tell your banker and your suppliers that a call is coming.

Authorization and signature

All 10 forms include a signed authorization to verify what you wrote. That signature is the landlord’s permission to pull your credit. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a credit bureau may furnish a consumer report “in accordance with the written instructions of the consumer to whom it relates”.

Read what you’re authorizing, because the forms differ. DKR uses a separate consent page for each guarantor and says it doesn’t order criminal history reports for a lease guaranty. KPM’s one-page form authorizes “credit checks, reference checks, criminal checks, and any other means available to the Landlord.”

The signature also certifies the numbers. KPM’s form says false information discovered after you move in is a breach of the lease. Atlas says a false statement is cause to cancel any agreement.

What a landlord does with the guarantor’s financial statement

The landlord asks for a guarantor because the tenant is often a new entity with little to collect against. Holland & Knight attorney Herman Lipkis describes the landlord’s problem this way:

The same ICSC paper lists 6 issues a landlord’s reviewer weighs when reading financial statements:

1. Whether an independent accounting firm prepared or audited them.
2. Whether they follow generally accepted accounting principles.
3. The difference between net worth and tangible net worth.
4. Liquidity.
5. How assets are titled.
6. How courts in that state treat marital property.

For an individual guarantor, the last 4 do most of the work. Take the example owner with $750,000 of net worth outside the business: $420,000 of home equity, $270,000 in retirement accounts, and $60,000 in cash and brokerage accounts. That $60,000 is what’s left after the opening costs are paid.

The lease runs 5 years at $91,200 a year, so the total obligation is $456,000 before any rent increases. Net worth covers that 1.6 times. Liquidity is thinner. The $60,000 in cash covers about 8 months of rent, and that’s the money a landlord could reach quickly.

Titling comes next. If the house is owned jointly with a spouse who isn’t signing, the landlord may not be able to count all of that equity. Marital property rules vary by state, which helps explain why 5 of the 10 forms ask about a spouse.

A second calculation uses the business’s sales. A 2018 ICSC law conference paper describes owners “evaluating the ratio of total occupancy costs to total sales at the location.” If the example store projects $800,000 in first-year sales, occupancy cost is $91,200 divided by $800,000, or 11.4%. The paper notes these metrics are specific to the tenant’s category of business, so compare your figure with similar stores.

Bankruptcy law gives the landlord another reason to want a person behind the lease. When a tenant in bankruptcy rejects a lease, 11 U.S.C. 502(b)(6) caps the landlord’s claim for future rent. The cap is the rent for the greater of 1 year or 15% of the remaining term, up to 3 years.

Proskauer’s guide to tenant bankruptcies notes that a guarantor who isn’t in bankruptcy is generally outside that cap.

How your numbers change the guaranty you’re offered

A strong statement gives you room to negotiate the guaranty. Holland & Knight’s article describes 4 types:

• Full or absolute guaranty. The guarantor covers every tenant obligation, with no conditions on the landlord.
• Partial or limited guaranty. Liability may be capped at a dollar amount, limited to money owed, or reduced over time through a “burn off” provision.
• Springing or bad acts guaranty. It becomes enforceable only after a specified event, such as fraud or a bankruptcy filing.
• Good guy guaranty. Common in New York City. The guarantor’s liability ends when the tenant pays through the surrender date and returns the keys.

Financial milestones can end a guaranty too. A 2019 ICSC workshop paper says a guaranty “may also terminate if the tenant achieves a stated net worth.” A sales level that improves the tenant’s credit can do the same.

Cash and bank credit are the other options. The 2023 ICSC paper says a letter of credit can give a landlord comfort “where a tenant’s financials may not otherwise meet lease credit criterion.” A larger security deposit works the same way. Holland & Knight lists the guarantor’s financial condition, the desirability of the location, and lender requirements among the factors that decide the outcome.

Our guide to what a personal guarantee is covers the mechanics. The same trade-offs appear on the lending side in business loans without a personal guarantee.

If an SBA loan is paying for the build-out

The lease and the loan have to fit each other. SOP 50 10 8.1 sets 2 triggers. One is $500,000 or 30% of loan proceeds, whichever is less, going to leasehold improvements. The other is the same share of the collateral being leasehold improvements, fixtures, machinery, or equipment attached to leased real estate.

Either way, the lender must get a copy of the written lease.

For a 7(a) loan, the lease term, including renewal options only the borrower can exercise, “should equal or exceed the term of the loan.” For a 504 loan it must. The lender should also get an assignment of the lease and a landlord’s waiver. Without them, the term match becomes mandatory on a 7(a) loan too.

That changes what you ask for in the letter of intent. For a build-out inside leased space, the SOP limits the loan to 10 years plus up to 12 months to finish the work. A 10-year loan against a 5-year lease needs a 5-year renewal option that only you control. Raise the landlord’s waiver before the lease is drafted.

The two files also overlap. The landlord asks for a personal financial statement, and the lender asks each 20% owner for SBA Form 413 or its own equivalent. For applications SBA receives on or after October 1, 2026, that statement must be signed and dated within 90 days of submission to SBA.

Prepare the numbers once and date both documents inside that window. The SBA 7(a) loan requirements guide lists the rest of the lender’s file, and the SBA loan calculator shows the payment.

After you submit: what the landlord asks next

The forms themselves show what comes back.

• Missing pieces. DKR warns that “incomplete submissions delay review,” and KPM says an incomplete form may lead to denial.
• A guarantor added late. CKH reserves the right to require a credit check authorization “if a Guarantor becomes a requirement of the lease.”
• More financials. NWE says it may also require personal and business financial statements and income and sales tax returns.
• An explanation. NWE asks about bankruptcies and unlawful detainer actions within the last 7 years. ShopOne asks whether you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or sued a previous landlord.

Write the explanation before anyone asks. A short note on an old bankruptcy or judgment, attached to the application, reads better than the same fact found on a credit report.

If you’re the landlord writing the application

DKR’s 5-page package is a good model for a small owner. It lists what to submit, says how applications are reviewed, and asks for a personal financial statement and Social Security number only from proposed guarantors. It also puts the consumer report consent on its own signed page.

Ask every guarantor for the same statement format so you can compare one file with the next. Pointing applicants to a standard personal financial statement template gets you there without designing a form. Our co-signer and guarantor use case explains what a guarantor’s statement should show.

Be careful with spouses. The 2023 ICSC paper asks whether requiring a spouse’s guaranty violates the Equal Credit Opportunity Act when the guarantor has sufficient assets alone. It calls that an analysis that “merits discussion,” so have counsel settle your policy before the form goes out.

The lease you sign goes on your rent roll, which your own lender reads when you refinance. A tenant who pays on time for the full term helps that file.

After you sign: the guaranty goes on your next financial statement

A lease guaranty is a contingent liability. You owe nothing unless the tenant defaults, and you still have to disclose it. On SBA Form 413 it belongs in the contingent liabilities panel, which our guide to Form 413 contingent liabilities walks through line by line.

Expect to be asked again. The 2019 ICSC paper’s sample guaranty has a placeholder for requirements that an individual guarantor deliver personal financial statements or tax returns during the term. Keeping the statement current makes that a short job. See how often to update a personal financial statement.

A guaranty is a contract with your personal assets behind it, and this article is general information. Have a real estate attorney read the lease and the guaranty before you sign. More on leases and loans is in the commercial real estate archive.