A chartered commercial surveyor is part of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and we primarily help clients with their commercial property, such as shops, offices, warehouses and industrial buildings.

Commercial surveyors provide invaluable professional advice regarding landlord and tenant matters, lease advisory such as rent reviews and lease renewals, commercial property management, asset management including sales and lettings of commercial property, as well as valuation work.

RICS is short for Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors which is the professional body that governs the Chartered Surveyors.  Chartered Surveyors must adhere to high professional standards and training, and undertake a vigorous accreditation and testing of competence, to have the designation of MRICS, or the next level FRICS.  There are also now AssocRICS qualifications as a recognition of working to RICS high standards.

This covers the collection of monies from the tenant – including rent, service charge, sinking fund and insurances, as well as managing landlord and tenant relationships, ensuring compliance with lease obligations including periodic review of the building, organising works to communal areas and ensuring peace of mind to the property owners.

It is a series of photographs taken of the property as defined by the lease or the client, usually internal and external views of the property and put into a schedule to attach to the lease. 

A lease with the repair limited by a Photographic Schedule of Condition will record the condition of the property and is attached to the lease prior to completion/signing the lease.

This can assist either a landlord with a dilapidations claim at the end of a lease if your property has been returned in a poorer state than documented in the schedule, or a tenant who can provide proof that the property was in the same if not better condition than when they took it on if they are faced with an unexpected claim.

When you rent business spaces, your lease may have a provision to review the rent you pay at periodic intervals, this is known as the Rent Review Clause. Leases which have longer than 5 years, may have a rent review half way through such as a 6 year review with rent review at the 3rd anniversary, or a 10 year lease with a review at the 5th anniversary. Typically, the lease refers to a Chartered Surveyor who can help by looking at the market and what the rent level at the date of review is.