contract-law landlord tenant massachusetts
Does this lease clause provide a one sided exit for the landlord?
<p>In the <a href="https://www.lrgboston.com/pdfs/Standard%20Lease%20Form.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Greater Boston Real Estate Board Standard Lease Form</a>, Section 8, it says</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>In the event the Lessor is not able through no fault of his own to deliver the leased premises to the Lessee at the time called for
  herein, the rent shall be abated on a pro rata basis [...], which abatement shall constitute full settlement of all damages caused by such delay, <strong>or</strong> the Lessor, at his election, shall be allowed reasonable time to deliver possession of the leased premises, and if he cannot deliver such possession within 30 days from the beginning of said term, either the Lessor or Lessee may then terminate this lease [...]</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This seems to say that if landlord can't deliver premises at the specified time (through no fault of his own at the specified time), he can <strong>either</strong> pro-rate rent, <strong>or</strong> continue not delivering the premises for 30 days, after which he can just terminate the lease. </p>

<p><strong>Does this allow a landlord to easily terminate the lease within the first 30 days, as long as he never delivers the premises?</strong> </p>

<p>I'm assuming that it would be easy to prove that it was <em>initially</em> through no fault of his own ("The contractors showed up late/took longer than expected"). Obviously I don't think it's very likely that a landlord would forego an entire lease worth of rent instead of pro-rating, but landlords can be sleazy and weird. </p>

<p>The key here is the provision "through no fault of his own". A landlord who relies on this provision would need to be able to demonstrate what the cause of the delay was, and that s/he had not been reasonably able to avoid it. Nor could a landlord simply fail to take steps to repair the problem, whatever it might be. If the problem will clearly take more than 30 days to  fix (Isay the building burned down), the prospective tenant would have the right to cancel the lease at once. True, in such a case the tenant would be put to the trouble and expense of finding another place at short notice, but then the landlord would have lost his income from the property. The provision allocates the losses between the parties in such a case.</p>

<p>If the property is not available at the specified time for the lease to start, but could be available a few days later, the quoted provision would not allow the landlord to just ignore the situation and end the lease. The landlord is allowed only a "reasonable time" to fix the problem, and taking significantly longer than is needed would not be "reasonable". </p>
