More than 38,000 businesses closed in Singapore in the first seven months of 2026, The Business Times reported, after 60,000 closed in 2025. Both figures are well above the 42,463 that closed in 2020, during the pandemic. Before winding up, many owners try to sell the business as a going concern: the café with its fit-out, the shop with its stock, the small factory with its machines. When that business sits in rented premises, the landlord has the most to lose and is often the last to be asked.
Your lease is with whoever signed it
A lease binds the parties who signed it and nobody else. As lawyers told The Business Times, a buyer who takes over the business, its assets and its staff gains no rights under your lease by doing so. It cannot enforce the lease against you, and you are entitled to refuse the takeover and ask the buyer to leave.
The rule cuts the other way too. If the new operator falls behind on rent or damages the unit, your claim is against the tenant who signed, not the buyer running the shop. If that original tenant is a company that has just sold its only business, the claim may be worth very little.
Consent is your leverage
Most commercial leases forbid assigning the tenancy without the landlord's written consent, and the permitted-use clause fixes what trade the premises can be used for. A buyer who wants to change the trade needs you twice over. Your consent is the one thing both seller and buyer need, so use it: check the buyer's accounts and track record, have the seller clear every arrear and outstanding charge before you agree, and take a fresh deposit or guarantee from the incoming party.
The clean way to hand over a lease is a novation, a three-way agreement in which the buyer takes on every right and obligation under the lease and the original tenant is released. It needs all three parties to agree in writing, which is why it is the exception rather than the rule. Without a release, the original tenant generally stays liable under the lease it signed, and a landlord who lets a buyer move in without paperwork has no lease with the buyer at all.
When the tenant is wound up
If the tenant company goes into liquidation, the landlord becomes one more unsecured creditor and usually recovers only part of what is owed. The harder case is a group that signs the lease in one company and runs the business, and keeps the assets, in another. The company you can sue may have nothing in it.
Singapore's Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 gives liquidators tools for this. They can ask the court to unwind transactions made at an undervalue in the years before a winding-up, and people who were knowingly party to fraudulent trading can be ordered to contribute personally. Those remedies are real, but they run through a liquidator and the courts, and they take time and money. For a landlord, the protection that works is the one agreed before the keys are handed over.
What to secure at signing
Sign with the company that has the assets. If the operating company is a thin subsidiary, ask for the parent or a financially stronger sister company to be the tenant, or to guarantee the lease.
Take a deposit or a banker's guarantee that matches the risk. A banker's guarantee is paid by the bank on demand, so you are not left chasing the tenant for it.
For small companies, ask for personal guarantees from the directors or controlling shareholders. It is the difference between a claim against an empty company and a claim against the people who ran it.
Check who you are signing with. ACRA's BizFile shows a company's directors, shareholders and registered address before you commit.
Keep the assignment and permitted-use clauses tight, and have a lawyer draft the lease. This piece explains the principles; it is not legal advice on your lease.
The same rules apply to a home let to a company
None of this is only about shops. A residential landlord who lets to an employer for its staff, or master-leases a house to a co-living operator, is also contracting with a company. If that company sells its business or winds up, the landlord is where the shop owner is: the lease is with the company, and selling the business does not move it. Ask the same questions before signing, and consider a director's guarantee from a small operator.
A master lease also does not move the rules off the owner. The minimum stay of three consecutive months in a private home, HDB's approval and six-month minimum for a flat, and the occupancy cap all still bind the property, and the owner stays responsible for them. Our co-living guide sets them out, along with what an owner nets by the room against a single fixed rent.
Price the vacancy before you buy
For anyone buying a shop, an office or a home to let, the risk in this piece is a stretch without rent: a failed tenant can mean months of vacancy, legal costs and a unit to re-let. Run the numbers with a vacancy allowance in the rental cashflow tool, check the gross and net rental yield the price implies, and see how long the income takes to cover the cost of buying with the break-even tool.
The retail map is changing in other ways too. HarbourFront Centre has closed, and Marina Square's mall shuts in March 2027 for redevelopment.