It happens all the time in Seattle’s neighborhoods. A new entrepreneur finds a promising storefront, the rent fits the budget, and the lease gets signed quickly in hopes of opening before a critical season. Then the first bill arrives. Common Area Expenses are added on, and what seemed like a manageable $4,000 monthly rent suddenly jumps to $6,000 or more. Within months, the math no longer works. The business closes. The investment is gone.

This is the exact scenario David Ruzumna, a Seattle attorney with nearly three decades of real estate law experience, works to prevent. Ruzumna has built his solo practice on a fundamental principle: small business owners are not powerless in lease negotiations. They simply need to know what questions to ask and what pitfalls to avoid. His guidance has become invaluable for entrepreneurs in Seattle and beyond who are about to sign one of the largest financial commitments of their careers.

“You’d be surprised how many people sign a lease and then become curious about its terms only after an issue arises,” Ruzumna said during a recent conversation about the five critical things every small business owner should know before putting pen to paper on a commercial lease.

Ruzumna’s insights come from a legal career that has taken him from criminal defense to real estate transactions to the bench as a judge pro tem in King County courts. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he earned his law degree in 1997 and founded his own practice in 2000, the same year his life took another turn: he got married just after passing the bar exam.

Now, 25 years into his practice, Ruzumna has represented hundreds of small business owners, shepherding them through negotiations that often determine whether their ventures succeed or fail.

“Everything Is Negotiable, Yet Most Business Owners Don’t Know It”

The most pervasive mistake David Ruzumna observes is the belief that a lease is a take-it-or-leave-it document. It is not. This misconception, he argues, costs entrepreneurs thousands of dollars and untold stress.

“Everything is negotiable,” Ruzumna said emphatically. “If you like the space and the lease terms except for some aspect of it, insist on the additional term you want and don’t assume that the lease cannot be changed to reflect the specific arrangement you have with the landlord.”

This principle flows from Ruzumna’s decades watching business owners defer to landlords as if landlords held all the power. In reality, landlords prefer occupied spaces with slightly modified terms to empty spaces with rigid language. An entrepreneur who understands this dynamic transforms the negotiation from a monologue into a conversation.

Ruzumna traces this insight partly to his experiences as a judge pro tem, where he has presided over countless disputes that stem from poor contracts. Parties often litigate issues that could have been avoided with better negotiation upfront. The lease, he emphasizes, deserves that same careful attention.

Read Every Line Before You Sign Anything

The most fundamental step, and the one most frequently skipped, is reading the entire lease. This should require no explanation. Yet Ruzumna finds himself counseling clients who have signed multi-year commitments after reviewing only a few pages.

“Read every line of the lease,” he advises bluntly. The document contains hidden obligations, unexpected costs and provisions that seem unreasonable precisely because they are unreasonable and should be negotiated away before signing.

Ruzumna has appeared before judges ranging from trial courts to the Washington appellate courts, and he has observed how disputes crystallize around terms that were never actually understood by the parties who signed them. The lease is where misunderstandings take root. A careful reading prevents years of headaches.

One entrepreneur Ruzumna worked with discovered, only after reading the fine print, that the lease required him to maintain specific insurance coverage that would cost him an additional $8,000 annually. Had he negotiated this upfront, he might have modified the provision or walked away from the space entirely. Instead, he discovered it after signing, leaving him trapped between accepting the unexpected cost or breaching the lease.

Know Your Market Rate or Be Exploited

The second critical step involves market research. Many business owners fall in love with a space and then justify whatever price the landlord asks. This is where market data becomes essential.

“Review the basics, including the rent being charged divided by the square footage of the space being rented to obtain a price per square foot,” Ruzumna explained. “Talk to commercial real estate agents to confirm that in the area, $x per square foot is within typical range of the market.”

This simple calculation anchors decision-making in objective reality rather than emotion. If comparable spaces nearby rent for $18 per square foot and your prospective landlord is asking $25, that discrepancy demands explanation. Perhaps the space offers unique advantages that justify the premium. Or perhaps the landlord is simply extracting what the market will bear from someone who failed to do their homework.

Ruzumna emphasizes that this step is not about being adversarial. It is about being informed. Real estate agents serve as your reality check, your independent verification that you are making a financially sound decision rather than an emotionally driven one.

Verify Your Landlord Actually Owns the Property

This principle sounds almost comically obvious, yet Ruzumna routinely stresses it because obvious details are where entrepreneurs stumble.

“Make sure that the landlord identified in the lease is the actual owner of the property,” he said. “Yes, you’d be surprised how often this is not the case.”

You may be negotiating with a property manager or representative who has no authority to bind the actual owner. You may negotiate lease modifications that later prove unenforceable because the person you negotiated with lacked authority to make those commitments. Title searches and property records exist precisely to prevent this confusion.

One client of Ruzumna’s discovered too late that he had negotiated lease terms with a property management company that the actual owner refused to honor. The resulting dispute consumed time, money and emotional energy that could have been avoided with a simple verification step upfront.

The Hidden Cost That Blindsides Small Business Owners

Perhaps the most commonly overlooked expense in commercial leases is Common Area Expenses, or CAM charges. These are the landlord’s mechanism for passing along shared building costs to individual tenants.

“When looking at monthly rent, don’t forget that typical commercial leases require you to pay your proportional share of Common Area Expenses or CAM charges, which can add quite a bit to your monthly financial obligation,” Ruzumna cautioned.

CAM charges can include building maintenance, utilities for common areas, property insurance, property management fees and more. A space advertised at $5,000 monthly rent might actually cost $6,500 or more once CAM charges are factored in. This is not dishonesty on the landlord’s part, necessarily. It is simply a detail that is easy to overlook if you are not carefully reading the lease and asking the right questions.

Ruzumna recommends not simply accepting CAM charges as inevitable. Question what is included, verify that the charges are reasonable compared to comparable buildings, and understand that this is another area where negotiation is possible. Some landlords will agree to cap CAM increases at a certain percentage annually, protecting tenants against runaway expenses.

The Philosophy Behind the Guidance

What ties these five principles together is a deeper philosophy that has shaped David Ruzumna’s entire legal career: small business owners have more power than they think. They have leverage. They have rights. And most importantly, they have the ability to educate themselves on what fair deal-making actually looks like.

This mindset extends far beyond real estate. Ruzumna has spent years representing people in high-stakes situations. He has defended clients facing felony charges, helped single mothers keep their homes, and guided entrepreneurs through difficult regulatory battles. In every case, he has seen how preparation and knowledge can shape the outcome.

“Being knowledgeable and confident is important, but equally important is for a prospective client to know that their attorney is not a cocky blowhard,” Ruzumna said. “When you do not know something, say so. Clients appreciate honesty more than bravado.”

That same honesty shapes the way he talks about leases. He does not promise that every term can be changed. But he is certain that those who ask questions, read every word, and speak up when something feels off will walk away with stronger deals and fewer regrets.

For any small business owner standing in front of a space that holds their dream, Ruzumna’s message is clear. Do not rush. Do not assume. Ask. Read. Negotiate. The future of your business might depend on it.