I was having a discussion with a friend recently about the pros and cons of leasing a building for business/commercial use, and they made a point I wanted to get a second opinion on.

I am in the self-serve car wash industry, and as with other businesses, sometimes a car wash will be built on leased land, or a pre-existing car wash can be leased to a new operator (like myself).

This friend I was talking to had a car wash that they built on leased land in 2001. It was a 20 year lease. At the end of that lease, they no longer wanted to run that wash, so they did not buy the land it sat on. They removed the equipment, and left. The car wash was demolished, and a restaurant has since been built on that lot.

As I have been searching for a car wash of my own, I have considered a lease, with option-to-buy as a form of seller finance.

My friend told me that this is often very risky for the landlord. She said, that in a commercial application, where a business is being operated in either a leased building (i.e. pre-existing wash that a tenant leases) or leased ground, where the tenant builds on that land, that should the tenant stop paying in either case-scenario, and an eviction is necessary, that it can take much longer, and much more cost to the landlord to evict them.

She said this was because the tenant has a business on that property, and that a landlord cannot simply evict them, and re-lease or take over operations on the property, as the business is not inherently theirs, even though it sits on their land.

I would like some input on when this may, or may not be true. I am coming at this from the buyer/ tenants point of view. I want to understand this so I can better negotiate with sellers if they are concerned about the possibility of having to evict me as a tenant. I respect that concern, and want to have answers to those questions should they arise. My ultimate goal is to own the property. I am not very interested in some kind of fixed lease as a tenant.

Thanks a bunch for any replies, I am sure this is a clunky and difficult question! Hopefully that makes sense, but if not, feel free to ask for clarification.