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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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1
GLOSSARY
lease – a rental agreement; a written, legal contract describing the terms under
which a building, office, home, or apartment is being rented by the owner to
another person or business that will use it
* Jim signed a one-year lease for a new apartment closer to his work.
to be up – to have expired or ended; to be at the end of the duration of
something; to be done
* Time is up! Please put down your pencils and bring the exam to the front of the
classroom.
to negotiate – to try to reach an agreement with someone who has different
interests and desires in order to achieve an outcome that both parties can accept
* They’ve been negotiating the terms of the merger for months.
to bring (something) up – to introduce a new topic of conversation; to mention
something that another person has not already mentioned
* Have you brought up marriage in your conversations with Emily?
landlord – the person who owns a building, office, home, or apartment and is
renting it out to someone else
* This window won’t open. Let’s call the landlord and ask him to get it fixed.
desperate – in a difficult situation with few or no options, and feeling fear and
anxiety, especially needing help from another person
* Shane has applied for more than 300 jobs, but he still hasn’t received an offer.
He’s getting desperate.
to renew – to extend something for another period of time
* Library books are due in three weeks unless you renew them.
to uproot – to move someone from a place where he or she is comfortable,
established, and has strong relationships, to a place that is unfamiliar
* Military families have to uproot their children every few years when they are
transferred to a different base.
antagonistic dealing – hostile or aggressive interactions that emphasize
opposition or strong disagreement
* The politicians were criticized for their antagonistic dealings with certain citizen
groups.
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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to jack up – to increase the cost of something significantly and very quickly
* Should stores be prevented from jacking up the cost of essential items when
they’re in high demand, like during natural disasters?
rent – the amount of money paid each month for permission to live in a home or
apartment or to operate a business in an office or building owned by someone
else
* The apartment on Fifth Street was our favorite, but the rent is almost twice as
much as it is for the apartments that are farther from downtown.
forced out – made to leave a place when one would prefer to stay
* If our competitors keep taking our customers, we’ll be forced out of business.
in the best interest of – benefitting someone; an ideal or very good situation for
someone
* It’s in your best interest to build good relationships with your classmates.
Someday they may become valuable business partners.
steady – constant; continuous; without changing; with a level amount
* The company has seen a steady increase in sales over the past three years.
tenant – a person who rents a property; a person who pays money to live in a
home or apartment that is owned by another person, or who pays money to
operate a business in an office or building that is owned by another person
* Are the tenants taking good care of the home?
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush – a phrase meaning that it is better
to value what one already has than to risk losing that for the uncertain possibility
of getting something better
* James is considering leaving his job, because he thinks he can find something
better, but I told him to wait until he actually gets an offer. A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush.
out with the old and in with the new – a phrase meaning that it is time to make
a change, leaving old things or old ways of doing things behind so that one can
embrace new things or new ways of doing things
* Let’s get rid of this orange 1970s carpet and put in tile flooring. Out with the old
and in with the new!
to stew – to think and worry about something, especially without involving other
people and without seeking help or advice
* Stephen spent all weekend stewing over his presentation.
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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3
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
1. Why does Jane want to renew the lease?
a) Because she doesn’t think they’ll find another building at the same price.
b) Because she really likes working with their landlord.
c) Because she thinks it will be difficult to succeed in another location.
2. Who pays the rent?
a) The lease
b) The landlord
c) The tenant
______________
WHAT ELSE DOES IT MEAN?
to bring (something) up
The phrase “to bring (something) up,” in this podcast, means to introduce a new
topic of conversation, or to mention something that another person has not
already mentioned: “Sometimes teachers struggle to bring up bad behavior with
their students’ parents.” The phrase “to bring (someone) up” means to raise a
child, or to take care of a child and provide guidance while he or she is growing
up: “Her parents died when she was a baby, so she was brought up by her
grandparents.” Finally, the phrase “bring it on” can be used as a challenge,
showing that one is ready to deal with something that will be bad, challenging or
difficult: “You want to sue us? Bring it on. We have the best lawyers in town.”
to stew
In this podcast, the verb “to stew” means to think and worry about something,
especially without involving other people and without seeking help or advice:
“Many business owners are stewing over the proposed increase in minimum
wage and how it will affect their expenses.” When talking about cooking, the verb
“to stew” means to cook meat and vegetables at a simmer (a low or gentle boil)
for a long time: “If you stew the beef for several hours, it should become more
tender.” And a “stew” is the thick, chunky, soup-like food made by stewing: “They
served a delicious stew with beef, potatoes, carrots, and onions.” Or, “Have you
ever stewed rhubarb with strawberries and a little sugar? It makes a delicious
dessert.”
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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4
CULTURE NOTE
Common Lease Provisions
Most “commercial leases” (rental agreements for businesses) contain many
“provisions” (clauses; agreements about what will happen under specific
circumstances) that the landlord and tenant must agree upon. For example,
provisions might “stipulate” (state explicitly or very clearly) the amount and
frequency of rent payments, the “duration” (length of time) of the lease, and the
“premises” (the exact location covered by the lease). An “escalation” clause
specifies when and by how much rent can be increased in the future. A
“maintenance” clause specifies which types of “maintenance” (repairs; taking
care of the building) are the responsibility of the landlord, and which are the
responsibility of the tenant.
Many leases contain provisions for “exclusivity,” meaning that only the tenant
may operate the business on the premise, and that the tenant may not “sub-
lease” (accept money from another person to operate the business) to another
business. Leases can also contain clauses about competition, specifying that the
landlord will not rent “adjacent” (immediately next to) or nearby properties to
similar businesses.
In a “troubled economy” (a place and period of time with slow economic growth
and many businesses closing), it is common to see “landlord solvency” clauses,
which stipulate what will happen if the landlord’s “mortgage company” (the
company that provides a loan to buy the property) “forecloses on the property”
(takes the property away from the owner, because he or she has not made
payments on the loan).
Finally, commercial leases might include a “renewal option” and/or a “purchase
option.” A “renewal option” specifies whether and how the tenant will be allowed
to “renew” (start again) the lease at the end of the “lease term” (the period of time
that the lease covers). A “purchase option” specifies whether the tenant will have
the “option” (choice) of buying the property when the lease “expires” (ends).
______________
Comprehension Questions Correct Answers: 1 – c; 2 – c
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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5
COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast number 1,068 – An Expiring
Business Lease.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast episode 1,068. I’m your host, Dr.
Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in
beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at ESLPod.com. Take a look at our ESL Podcast Store that has
some additional courses in Business and Daily English I know you’re going to
love.
This episode is a dialogue about a business that has to renew or sign a new
contract or lease for a place that they rent. Let’s get started.
[start of dialogue]
Jane: Our lease is up at the end of this year and we need to negotiate a new
one.
Monty: I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I’m desperate to
renew.
Jane: We are desperate to renew. We’ve built our business here, and it would be
really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere.
Monty: I know, but given our antagonistic dealings in the past, I’m afraid the
landlord is going to jack up our rent and we’ll be forced out.
Jane: It’s in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his
property.
Monty: He might not see it that way. He might see this as an opportunity to bring
in a higher-paying tenant.
Jane: Or he may realize that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Monty: Or he might think, “Out with the old and in with the new.”
Jane: You won’t know until you contact him.
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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6
Monty: Right, but I think I’ll let him stew just a little longer.
[end of dialogue]
Jane begins our dialogue by saying to Monty, “Our lease is up at the end of this
year.” Your “lease” (lease) is your contract that deals with something that you are
renting. You could lease a car, for example. You could lease a house. You could
lease an apartment. You could lease an office. All of these are things that you
can sign a contract about and use if you pay the person who owns those things
some money.
So, when you lease an apartment, you are renting an apartment. When you
lease a car, you are basically renting the car, but we don’t use the verb “rent”
(rent) for cars. We usually use the word “lease.” For a business, you can use
either rent or lease. These are verbs that indicate that you are paying money to
use something. “Lease” is also a noun referring to the contract itself, the legal
agreement that you and the owner sign regarding the property or the thing that
you are renting.
Jane says that their “lease is up.” When we say something is “up,” we mean it’s
expired, it’s ended – it’s at the end of some period of time. In fact, in school
sometimes teachers will say, “Time’s up” or “Your time is up” when they are
giving an examination, a test, to their students. Teachers will tell their students,
“Time’s up,” meaning you can no longer work on the test or the exam.
Well here, we’re talking about a lease that is up, meaning it is about to “expire”
(expire). “To expire” means to end, in this case. “To expire” can also mean to die,
informally. People say, “He expired.” The nicer way of saying that someone died
is that he “passed away.” Here, we’re not talking about a person, but a lease that
has expired.
Jane says, “We need to negotiate a new one,” meaning a new lease. “To
negotiate” means to try to reach an agreement with someone, usually over
something involving money or something of value. You could negotiate an
agreement between two countries, for example. An agreement between two
countries is usually called a “treaty” (treaty). Here, we’re talking about negotiating
a lease.
Monty says, “I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I’m desperate to
renew.” Monty is worried about bringing something up. “To bring something up”
here means to mention something that the other person hasn’t talked about yet –
to raise an issue or to introduce a new topic that the other person hasn’t been
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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7
talking about or hasn’t referred to yet. Sometimes people will say, “I hate to bring
this up,” meaning I hate to mention this because it’s perhaps something
unpleasant.
But to bring something up doesn’t mean that it’s unpleasant, that it’s something
that’s going to cause a problem. You can bring up anything as a topic of
conversation, whether it’s positive or negative. Monty, however, is worried about
bringing up the topic of the lease renewal because he thinks the landlord will
think he’s “desperate to renew.” A “landlord” (landlord) is a person who owns a
building, office, home, condominium, or apartment and who rents that property
out to another person – who leases the property to another person.
The landlord will think that Monty is “desperate to renew” if Monty brings up the
topic first. “To be desperate” (desperate) is to be in a difficult situation, a difficult
problem with very few options, with very few choices. Someone who is desperate
is someone who is in a lot of trouble and doesn’t know what to do or doesn’t have
many options in terms of getting out of the trouble that he’s in. Monty doesn’t
want to seem “desperate to renew” his lease. “To renew” means to sign a new
lease, to extend the period of time of the rental or of the lease.
Jane says, “We are desperate to renew. We’ve built our business here, and it
would be really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere. Jane is saying,
well, we are desperate; we really do want to renew the lease. The word
“desperate” is sometimes used, as it is here, to mean not exactly that you have
no options, but that you really, really want a certain thing to happen.
Jane really wants them to renew their lease because they have built a business
at this particular location. They may have a store or a restaurant, and it made
have been there for many years, so they don’t want to move it somewhere else.
They want to stay there. They’ve built their business there. She says it would be
“difficult to uproot it.” “To uproot” (uproot) means to move from one place to
another, especially from somewhere where you are comfortable and want to
stay.
Monty says, “I know” – I understand – “but given our antagonistic dealings in the
past, I’m afraid the landlord is going to jack up our rent and we’ll be forced out.”
“Antagonistic (antagonistic) dealings (dealings)” are interactions or conversations
with another person that are negative or that involve some sort of strong
disagreement. If you fight a lot with another person, you are “antagonistic” toward
that person. You don’t like them.
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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“Dealings” has to do with conversations – or “interactions,” we would also say –
between one person and another. So, if you have “antagonistic dealings” with,
say, the landlord, you have had a lot of disagreements and arguments in the
past. We would use this expression, “antagonistic dealings,” when we are talking
about a work situation or a business situation like this.
Monty is afraid the landlord is going to “jack up the rent.” “To jack (jack) up” is a
two-word phrasal verb meaning to increase, but to increase dramatically – to
increase something a lot. If the landlord jacks up your rent, he or she increases it
by a significant amount. You were paying $500 a month, and now you’re going to
pay a thousand dollars a month. That would be jacking up your rent a lot,
significantly. The “rent” here, as a noun, refers to the money that you pay every
month or every year to lease the property.
“To be forced out” is a phrasal verb meaning to have to leave somewhere even
though you want to stay. If a landlord forces out a person renting from him, he’s
making that person leave even though the person doesn’t want to leave. The
person who rents from a landlord, by the way, is called a “tenant” (tenant). You
will come across that word in a second.
Jane says, “It’s in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business
leasing his property.” If you say something is “in the best interest” of someone,
you mean that it’s a good situation for that person. It benefits that person. In this
case, it is in the best interest of the landlord – meaning it would be a good thing
for the landlord – to keep a steady business leasing his property. “Steady”
(steady) means without changing. If you have a “steady customer,” you have a
customer who always comes back to your store, every week or every month.
A “steady tenant” would be someone who leases from a landlord for a long
period of time. All landlords know that it’s better to have someone paying you
some money for your property than no money, and so landlords like to keep
tenants as long as they can, so at least they are getting money. Monty says,
however, that the landlord “might not see it that way,” meaning the landlord may
not necessarily have the same opinion of the situation. He says, “He might see
this as an opportunity to bring in a higher-paying tenant,” someone who will give
him even more money.
Jane disagrees. She says, “Or he” (again, the landlord) “may realize that a bird in
the hand is worth two in the bush.” This is an old expression: “A bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush” (bush). The word “bush” here doesn’t refer to one of our
former U.S. presidents. It refers to a small shrub. It’s like a plant, but it’s a plant
that has a lot of branches and leaves on it, typically.
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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The expression “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” means it’s better to
keep something that you have and you know for sure will give you some benefit
than to try to get something new with the possibility that you won’t get anything
better if you give up what you already have. Let me give you an example.
Let’s say that you are working at a job, and you are making $20 an hour. You
have an opportunity to leave that job and get another job that will pay you $30 an
hour. However, you might not get the job. You have to quit your first job in order
to apply for the second job. So, you would have to lose your job, your certain $20
an hour, for the possibility of getting a better job, but it might not work out. You
might not get the job. And so if that happens, you would be without any money.
“A bird in the hand” – meaning if you’re holding a bird in your hand – that’s worth
more than two birds that are sitting over there that you don’t have. Of course, to
get the two birds, you have to let go of the bird in your hand and run over and try
to grab the other two birds with your hands. So, that’s kind of the background of
that rather complicated expression.
Monty comes back with another expression. He says, “Out with the old and in
with the new.” This is another common saying or expression. It means to get rid
of the old things in your life and bring in new things in your life because the new
things will be better or more exciting. Jane says, “You won’t know until you
contact him.” Jane is telling Monty that he won’t know the real situation until he
actually talks to the landlord.
Monty says, “Right” – meaning yes, I understand, you are correct – “but I think I’ll
let him stew just a little longer.” The verb “to stew” (stew) means to think and
worry about something, especially without telling anyone else that you are
worried about it or that you are thinking about it. It’s a negative thing.
If someone says, “I’ve been stewing all day over my presentation,” he means
he’s been thinking about this all day, but he hasn’t talked to anyone else. He
hasn’t gotten any help from anyone else. He’s just been there thinking and
worrying about it. Usually if you stew about something, the idea is that you’re
worrying about it, but you’re not really helping yourself. You’re wasting your time
thinking about it.
Now let’s listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
[start of dialogue]
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ESL Podcast 1068 – An Expiring Business Lease
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Jane: Our lease is up at the end of this year and we need to negotiate a new
one.
Monty: I know, but if I bring it up first, the landlord will think I’m desperate to
renew.
Jane: We are desperate to renew. We’ve built our business here, and it would be
really difficult to uproot it and reestablish it elsewhere.
Monty: I know, but given our antagonistic dealings in the past, I’m afraid the
landlord is going to jack up our rent and we’ll be forced out.
Jane: It’s in the best interest of the landlord to keep a steady business leasing his
property.
Monty: He might not see it that way. He might see this as an opportunity to bring
in a higher-paying tenant.
Jane: Or he may realize that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Monty: Or he might think, “Out with the old and in with the new.”
Jane: You won’t know until you contact him.
Monty: Right, but I think I’ll let him stew just a little longer.
[end of dialogue]
If you’re desperate to improve your English, you’ve come to the right place.
Thanks to the scripts from our wonderful scriptwriter, Dr. Lucy Tse, you can start
improving your English today.
From Los Angeles, California, I’m Jeff McQuillan. Thanks for listening. Come
back and listen to listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast was written and produced by Dr. Lucy
Tse, hosted by Dr. Jeff McQuillan. Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational
Development.