Exit & relocation
Franchise
Auckland Viaduct / Wynyard Quarter
How a Caci franchisee relocated her clinic and walked away from the old lease clean
The result
100%
of the lease bond recovered, with the old clinic handed back on time and no end-of-lease dispute.
A seamless move to a better Wynyard Quarter site, a defit scoped to exactly what the lease required, and a handover the landlord signed off, all through Covid disruption.
At a glance
Client
Louise Donaldson — Caci franchisee, Wynyard Quarter
Sector
Franchise (Service Providers)
Location
Auckland Viaduct to Wynyard Quarter
Service
Exit & relocation (defit, reinstatement + new lease)
The brief
Relocate the clinic for better visibility, and exit the old lease without a costly reinstatement fight.
The situation
Nine years in, the traffic moved, so the clinic had to
Caci Clinic Auckland had traded from the same Viaduct premises for nine years. When Auckland reconfigured the Viaduct, the traffic patterns shifted and the site lost the visibility and easy access the clinic ran on.
The franchisee, Louise Donaldson, decided to relocate to a stronger site nearby in the Wynyard Quarter. That meant two jobs running at once: open the new clinic, and hand the old one back to the landlord in the condition the lease demanded.
What was at stake
The exit is where a relocation quietly gets expensive
Everyone focuses on the new site. The old one is where the money leaks. Make-good clauses can require stripping a fit-out back to base build: partitions, ceilings, HVAC, fire systems, flooring, all of it. Get the scope wrong, or fall out with the landlord over it, and the bill climbs fast.
This lease made it harder. There was no Premises Condition Report, the document that records what the space looked like on day one, so “original condition” was open to argument. And the fit-out touched fire alarms and sprinklers, which pull in building compliance and possible consents.
Then Covid hit, stalling the new clinic's building consent and fit-out. Miss the old lease's expiry and reinstatement window, and the tenant wears holdover rent, penalties, or a dispute at handback, right in the middle of opening a new clinic.
What we did
Pin down the scope, align the timing, keep the landlord on side
Louise brought in Marcus from Proactive Property Group to run both ends: the exit from the old premises and the lease for the new one. Having sat on both sides of the table as landlord and tenant, he knew where reinstatement fights start, and how to head them off.
01
Establish the real reinstatement scope
With no Premises Condition Report, dug into the building records to establish the base-build baseline, then defined exactly what the defit did and didn't need to cover. Only what the lease required, nothing more.
02
Sort the compliance questions early
The fit-out included a dropped ceiling, fire alarms and sprinklers. Engaged a fire engineer to confirm whether reinstating the sprinkler system needed building consent or just council notification, before any work started.
03
Keep the landlord's property manager aligned
Agreed the scope, standard and timeline with the landlord's property manager up front, so there was nothing to argue about at handover.
04
Buy time with a lease extension
When Covid stalled the new clinic's consent and fit-out, negotiated extensions on the old lease. That kept the clinic trading through the move and opened a clean reinstatement window before expiry.
The result
A clean handover, the bond back, and no dispute
The clinic moved to Wynyard Quarter with barely a gap in trading, and the old premises went back to the landlord in agreed condition:
Lease bond recovered in full
Returned by the landlord after a signed-off handover.
No end-of-lease dispute
Scope and standard agreed with the property manager before work began.
Cost-controlled defit
Reinstated to base build, only what the lease actually required.
Seamless relocation
Lease extensions bridged the move, so the clinic kept trading through Covid delays.
Compliance handled properly
Fire and sprinkler works cleared with a fire engineer before starting.
Both ends managed as one
Old-premises exit and new-premises lease run on a single timeline.
The trap in most relocations is treating the exit as an afterthought. The reinstatement scope gets guessed at, the landlord gets surprised at handover, and the tenant overpays to make the argument go away.
Here the scope was defined against the building's actual base build, agreed with the landlord early, and executed to that standard. So the handover was a formality, and the bond came back.
If you're exiting or relocating
Most of a relocation's cost hides in the lease you're leaving. Tenants guess at a reinstatement scope no one agreed, then pay more to settle the argument at handover. Read the lease, pin the scope to the building's actual base build, and get the landlord to sign it off before the work starts. That's the difference between handing back keys and handing over a cheque.
About the adviser
Marcus Bosch
Marcus has spent 20 years acting for tenants across New Zealand and the East Coast of Australia — finding premises, negotiating leases and managing property costs across the full lease lifecycle. Having sat on both sides of the table as landlord and tenant, he negotiates commercial terms most tenants only sign once or twice in the life of their business.
More about Marcus and Proactive Property Group →
More proof
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This was an exit and relocation. It's one stage of our commercial lease advisory Services.
- Exit & relocation
- Find premises
- Franchise tenants
Exiting or relocating a lease?
The reinstatement bill is only as big as the scope you agree to. Before you commit to make-good works, let me check what your lease actually requires, and what it doesn't. Tell me about the exit.