A schedule of condition is one of the few professional fees in a commercial letting that reliably pays for itself, and it is also one of the most commonly skipped, because it falls due at exactly the moment a tenant is spending on everything else.
The short version
A small retail or office unit typically runs from a few hundred pounds; large or complex premises run into the low thousands. Set that against a dilapidations claim on the same unit, which is routinely five figures.
What drives the cost
- Floor area, and the number of separate spaces to walk.
- Age and condition — an old, tired building takes far longer to record properly than a new shell.
- How much of the exterior falls within the demise.
- Plant and services, if they are the tenant's responsibility.
- Turnaround: a schedule needed in three days before completion costs more than one with two weeks.
Our commercial work is priced on a day rate rather than a room count, because a shop unit is a different scale of document to a flat. Current pricing is on the commercial page.
The test for whether it is worth it
Ask two questions. Is the lease full repairing? And is the building older than you are? If the answer to both is yes, the schedule is not optional in any commercial sense — it is the difference between handing back the unit you took and paying to improve someone else's asset.
The exception is a genuinely new unit taken on a short lease with a repairing obligation already limited by the lease itself. Read the clause; your solicitor will tell you which you have.
The timing that ruins it
The schedule has to exist before the lease is completed, and the lease has to refer to it. A schedule produced afterwards still has some evidential value but the clause that limits your liability only works if it points at an annexed document. Once you have signed, the moment has gone.
See dilapidations explained for what you are protecting yourself from.
Written by The Surveyor Co, a trading name of LW Renovation Group Ltd, Lincoln. This guide describes how records are written and read; it is not legal advice. Where a deposit scheme, lease or insurer sets a rule, that rule wins.