We were contacted by the external legal counsel of an important company in the real estate sector. They had a client that was the owners of a whole building in a central street in Barcelona. They wanted to completely refurbish the building for the construction of a hotel and were reaching agreements with almost all tenants.
One of the tenants opened a hostel in his property, occupying a whole floor with an old rental contract. The amounts requested by the tenant of the hostel to terminate the contract were very high and totally out of the market.
Our client suspected that the owner of the business made an unjustified sublease and that he is no longer running the business. For this reason they came to us, to try to obtain evidence that will allow them to terminate the contract for having carried out the aforementioned subletting.
The investigations carried out by Grupo Paradell showed that the business had been sublet for more than 5 years and that the owner had been retired all that time.
On the basis of the evidence provided, our client was able to terminate the lease without having to compensate the tenant. As a result they were able to carry out the project of refurbish the building and build the new hotel.