Resource center
Sale-Leaseback Guides for Companies That Own Their Building
Plain-English guides to selling your building, staying in it as a tenant, and negotiating the lease you will live with.
You sell once. You rent for years.
A sale-leaseback turns the building your company owns into cash while you keep operating in it. The sale price gets the attention, but the lease you sign on the same day decides what the deal costs you over time. These guides are organized by where you are: learning how it works, weighing it against the alternatives, or preparing to go to market.
Start here
Sale-leasebacks, in plain English
What a sale-leaseback is, how the money works and which businesses it suits.
Sale-leaseback basics
What Is a Sale-Leaseback?
You sell the building you operate from, sign a lease with the buyer at the same closing, and keep running the business where it is.
Read the guide →How Does a Sale-Leaseback Work, Step by Step?
The sequence from the first conversation about value to the day you pay rent on a building you used to own.
Read the guide →Why Do Companies Do Sale-Leasebacks?
The motives fall into three groups: what the money is for, what the company wants to be, and what is about to happen to it.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback Pros and Cons for Business Owners
What you gain, what you give up, and the items that can land on either side depending on how the deal is written.
Read the guide →Who Buys Sale-Leaseback Properties?
The buyer of your building will be your landlord for years, so it pays to know what kind of investor it is and what it wants.
Read the guide →What Types of Property Work for a Sale-Leaseback?
Investors look at two things in the building: how much your business depends on it, and what they could do with it if you left.
Read the guide →Is Your Business a Good Candidate for a Sale-Leaseback?
A self-assessment in four parts: ownership, commitment to the site, financial strength and use of proceeds.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback Glossary: 35 Terms Explained
The vocabulary you will hear from investors, attorneys and accountants, defined without jargon and grouped by where it shows up.
Read the guide →8 Common Myths About Sale-Leasebacks
What owners are told about sale-leasebacks, what is actually true, and where each misunderstanding comes from.
Read the guide →The money, in plain English
Cap Rates Explained: How a Sale-Leaseback Is Priced
One division explains most of how investors price your building, and it shows why rent and price cannot be negotiated separately.
Read the guide →How Is Rent Set in a Sale-Leaseback?
Unlike an ordinary lease, you help choose the rent, and the number you choose also sets the price you are paid.
Read the guide →Triple Net Leases Explained for Owner-Occupiers
You were paying the taxes, insurance and repairs yesterday. Here is what a triple net lease keeps the same and what it changes.
Read the guide →How Much Cash Can a Sale-Leaseback Raise?
The headline price is only the starting point. What matters is the cash left after the mortgage, the closing costs and the tax bill.
Read the guide →What Does Owning Your Building Really Cost Your Business?
A paid-off building is not free. It holds capital, attention and risk that never appear on the monthly statement.
Read the guide →How Long Does a Sale-Leaseback Take?
There is no fixed timeline. The schedule is set by how prepared the seller is and by what the buyer finds during due diligence.
Read the guide →What Does a Sale-Leaseback Cost in Fees and Closing Costs?
The costs fall into predictable categories. Knowing them early lets you budget, negotiate who pays and avoid surprises at the closing table.
Read the guide →By type of business
Sale-Leasebacks for Manufacturers and Industrial Owners
A plant is harder to move than an office, which makes a sale-leaseback both more natural and more consequential for a manufacturer.
Read the guide →Sale-Leasebacks for Medical and Dental Practices
When the doctors own the building, real estate decisions and practice decisions are tangled together. A sale-leaseback can separate them.
Read the guide →Sale-Leasebacks for Family Businesses and Succession Planning
The building is often where a family's wealth sits and where its succession plan gets stuck.
Read the guide →Sale-Leasebacks for Private-Equity-Backed Companies
For a sponsor the building is capital to redeploy. For the company it is a lease that will outlast the sponsor's ownership.
Read the guide →Compare and plan
Weighing the alternatives, the tax questions and the lease
For owners actively evaluating a deal: the alternatives, the accounting and tax questions to take to your CPA, and the lease terms that decide whether it works.
Comparing your options
Sale-Leaseback vs Refinancing Your Mortgage
Both pull cash out of the same building. They differ in how much, for how long, on what conditions and what you own at the end.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback vs a Bank Loan or Line of Credit
These are not three versions of the same thing. Each is built for a different kind of need, and using the wrong one is expensive.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback vs Selling and Moving
Once you have decided to sell, the next question is whether the building still fits the business.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback vs Keeping Your Building
Doing nothing is a decision too. This framework tests whether the building's equity is working harder where it is or would work harder in the business.
Read the guide →Selling Your Company: Should the Real Estate Go With It?
The building and the business are two different assets, and the buyers who pay the most for one are often not the buyers who pay the most for the other.
Read the guide →Short-Term and Partial Sale-Leasebacks
Not every leaseback is a long net lease. Two common variations solve different problems and are priced by different buyers.
Read the guide →Tax and accounting
Sale-Leaseback Accounting Under ASC 842
What a CFO or controller should understand about US GAAP before the letter of intent is signed, because deal terms decide the accounting.
Read the guide →How Is a Sale-Leaseback Taxed?
The sale half and the lease half are taxed under different rules, and the net proceeds you keep depend on both.
Read the guide →Can You Use a 1031 Exchange With a Sale-Leaseback?
Section 1031 shows up in sale-leasebacks in three places: the buyer's side, the seller's reinvestment, and the length of the lease itself.
Read the guide →When Is a Sale-Leaseback Treated as a Financing?
The documents can say sale and lease while the accounting rules, or the IRS, see a borrowing secured by the building.
Read the guide →How Does a Sale-Leaseback Affect Your Balance Sheet and Covenants?
The statements change shape on closing day, and your lenders will read the new shape through definitions written into your loan agreements.
Read the guide →Illinois Transfer and Property Taxes in a Sale-Leaseback
Two local tax questions belong in every Illinois sale-leaseback model: what the transfer costs at closing, and what happens to the property tax bill you will still be paying.
Read the guide →Negotiating the leaseback
How Long Should a Sale-Leaseback Lease Be?
Term is the lever that connects the price you receive to the years of rent you owe, so it should come from your business plan and not from the buyer's preference.
Read the guide →Rent Escalations in a Sale-Leaseback: Fixed, CPI or Both?
The starting rent gets the attention, but over a long leaseback the escalation clause decides what the building costs you.
Read the guide →Who Pays for the Roof, Structure and Capital Repairs?
The repair clause decides whether selling the building also sold its largest future bills, or whether you kept them.
Read the guide →Can You Buy Your Building Back Later?
A path back to ownership is negotiable, but each kind of right has a different strength, a different cost and a different effect on how the deal is reported.
Read the guide →Assignment, Subletting and Selling Your Business Later
The transfer clause you sign on the day you sell the building is the one a future buyer of your company will read first.
Read the guide →Expansion and Alteration Rights After You Sell
Once the building belongs to an investor, every wall you move and every addition you plan runs through the lease.
Read the guide →What Happens at the End of a Sale-Leaseback Lease?
The last year of a leaseback is decided by clauses written in the first week, so it pays to picture the exit before you sign.
Read the guide →Guaranties, Security Deposits and Credit Support
Credit support is the part of a leaseback where a better price and personal exposure pull in opposite directions.
Read the guide →Value and risk
How Does Your Company's Credit Affect Sale-Leaseback Pricing?
The buyer of your building is really buying your promise to pay rent, so your financial story is part of what is being sold.
Read the guide →The Above-Market Rent Trap in Sale-Leasebacks
Because price is calculated from rent, it is easy to manufacture a bigger check at closing, and just as easy to regret it.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback Risks and How to Reduce Them
Most of the risk in a sale-leaseback sits in the lease, which means most of it can be negotiated before you sign.
Read the guide →What Will a Buyer Inspect? Environmental, Title, Survey and Condition
Buyers check the same four things on nearly every commercial property, and a seller who checks them first keeps control of price and timing.
Read the guide →Choose and act
Going to market and choosing your team
Ready to move? How to prepare, pick a buyer and advisors, and decide with clear eyes.
Preparing to go to market
How to Prepare Your Building and Financials for a Sale-Leaseback
The weeks before a building goes to market do more to set the price and the lease than the negotiation that follows.
Read the guide →Sale-Leaseback Document Checklist
Three folders, assembled before the first investor call, cover nearly everything a buyer and its lender will request.
Read the guide →From Letter of Intent to Closing: The Sale-Leaseback Deal Process
Two contracts are negotiated at the same time with the same counterparty, and the order in which points are settled decides who has leverage.
Read the guide →How to Choose the Right Sale-Leaseback Buyer
You are choosing a purchaser for one day and a landlord for many years, and the two jobs call for different qualities.
Read the guide →Marketed Process or Off-Market Sale-Leaseback?
The choice is a trade between competitive tension and control over who knows your building is for sale.
Read the guide →How to Compare Sale-Leaseback Offers Side by Side
Two offers with different prices can cost the same, and the higher price can be the more expensive deal.
Read the guide →Choosing your advisors
Do You Need a Broker for a Sale-Leaseback?
You can sell and lease back without an advisor. The question is what you take on by doing so.
Read the guide →Why the Seller Needs Tenant-Side Representation
The sale closes in a day. The lease runs for years, and that is where most of the long-run value is won or lost.
Read the guide →12 Questions to Ask a Sale-Leaseback Advisor
Use the same twelve questions with every advisor you interview, and listen for specifics.
Read the guide →Who Should Be on Your Sale-Leaseback Deal Team?
Five outside roles and one internal lead cover the work. The order in which you involve them matters.
Read the guide →How Tenant Advisory Group Handles a Sale-Leaseback
Four steps, one client: the company that is selling its building and staying in it.
Read the guide →Making the decision
Sale-Leasebacks in Chicago and Illinois: What Owners Should Know
The structure is the same everywhere. The transfer taxes, the property tax system and the building stock are local.
Read the guide →How Should You Use Sale-Leaseback Proceeds?
Decide where the money goes before you decide to sell, and test each use against the rent you are taking on.
Read the guide →Negotiating the Leaseback: 10 Terms That Matter Most
A priority list for the letter of intent, in the order we would raise the terms with a buyer.
Read the guide →When Is a Sale-Leaseback the Wrong Move?
Six red flags that should stop or reshape the deal, and what to consider in its place.
Read the guide →Life After a Sale-Leaseback: Being a Tenant in Your Own Building
The building, the people and the work stay the same. The rules you operate under are now written in a lease.
Read the guide →Questions
About this resource center
Who is this resource center for?
Owners, CFOs and controllers of companies that own the property they operate from, including manufacturers, distributors, medical and dental practices, professional firms and family businesses, in Chicago, Illinois and other U.S. markets.
Where should I start?
If the idea is new, begin with the "Start here" guides. If you are comparing a sale-leaseback with refinancing or selling outright, go to "Compare and plan". If you are getting ready to talk to buyers, go to "Choose and act".
Whom does Tenant Advisory Group represent in a sale-leaseback?
The company that owns and occupies the building. In a sale-leaseback the seller becomes the tenant, so we work on both halves of the deal for you: the sale and the lease.
Is this tax or accounting advice?
No. The guides explain concepts and point to their sources so you can have a better conversation with your CPA and attorney, who should review any transaction before you commit.
Thinking about a sale-leaseback?
Talk to TAG about whether it fits your financial goals, your operations and your plans for the building.