If you signed a triple-net lease on commercial space in DFW, you are paying for more than rent. You are paying for taxes, building insurance, common area maintenance, and almost everything that breaks inside your leased space. HVAC, electrical, plumbing, lighting, doors, windows. The three nets name covers the obvious costs; the larger maintenance burden is buried in the lease's repair clauses.
Most commercial tenants do not read that section closely until something breaks. Then they call the landlord, the landlord points to the lease, and the tenant finds out they own the problem.
This page is the plain-English version of what your lease almost certainly says about HVAC, electrical, and plumbing, and what we provide when you call us. It also covers two more items most DFW commercial leases put on the tenant: the recurring AC maintenance the lease requires, and the parking lot outside your door. Your lease is the final word, every time. Read it before authorizing major work. But this gives you the operator view of how it normally splits in DFW commercial real estate.
HVAC under a triple-net lease
Of the three trades, HVAC carries the largest dollar exposure for commercial tenants on NNN leases. A rooftop unit replacement is a five-figure event for most commercial spaces; major repairs run into the thousands. Almost all of that lands on the tenant.
What is normally the tenant's responsibility
- Routine maintenance: filter changes, coil cleaning, refrigerant top-off, belt replacement
- Repair of any component serving the leased space: compressor, fan motor, condenser coil, thermostat, ductwork
- Replacement of the rooftop unit or split system serving the leased space, when it reaches end of life or fails irreparably
- Permits, inspections, and bringing the system up to current code when work is performed
What is normally the landlord's
- The roof itself: membrane, structure, flashing, drainage
- Any building-wide HVAC infrastructure (rare in single-tenant strip retail; more common in mid-rise office)
- The exterior shell that protects the equipment
This split makes the most operational sense in older DFW commercial buildings, 1950s and 1960s strip retail, light industrial, and small office park, where the rooftop unit on top of your space is plainly serving your space and no one else. The roof under the unit serves the whole building.
Where it gets gray
- A roof failure causes water to enter the rooftop unit. Is the resulting damage a roof problem (landlord) or an HVAC problem (tenant)? Usually both. The lease apportions.
- The unit serving your space is undersized for current code or current occupancy. Is this a maintenance event (tenant) or a building-improvement event (sometimes landlord under capital-improvement carve-outs)? Lease-specific.
- A new tenant moves in and the prior tenant's unit was abandoned in poor condition. The new tenant may inherit responsibility unless the lease handover spelled out a different baseline.
What we provide
We give you a written scope and a written quote before work starts. The invoice is line-itemed by labor, parts, and any permitting separately so you can attach it to CAM reconciliation or a direct request to your landlord. We document equipment age, condition, and the work performed, including photographs, so if a question comes up later about whether something was repair (tenant) or capital improvement (negotiable), you have the record.
Electrical work under a triple-net lease
The dollar exposure on commercial electrical work is smaller per event than HVAC, but the regulatory exposure is larger. Texas requires commercial electrical work to be done under a licensed master electrician, with permits and inspections. The tenant who skips this step inherits both the work and any code violations.
What is normally the tenant's responsibility
- Repair of any circuit, outlet, breaker, or fixture inside the leased space
- Modifications for tenant improvements: added outlets, new circuits, equipment hookups
- Lighting replacement and upgrades inside the leased space
- Restoration after equipment damage, water intrusion, or breaker overload events
- All required permits and inspections on tenant work
What is normally the landlord's
- The building's main service drop from the utility
- The primary panel and any common-area sub-panels
- Shared-system electrical: parking-lot lighting, building exterior, common hallways
- Capital electrical-service upgrades when triggered by building-wide events
Where it gets gray
- Your panel inside the leased space is undersized for your equipment, and you need an upgrade. Tenant cost, usually. But if the building's service drop is the actual bottleneck, that is a landlord conversation.
- Power-quality issues that affect multiple tenants (voltage drops, harmonic distortion, brown-outs) usually trace back to the landlord's service or upstream. If your equipment is dying because the supply is bad, do not pay to upgrade your panel before someone has read the meter.
What we provide
We put a licensed master electrician on every electrical job, and we pull permits and schedule inspections where the work calls for them. The invoice itemizes labor, parts, and permitting separately, and we document the work in a way that survives a landlord asking whether something is repair (tenant) or building-system upgrade (negotiable). For tenants doing build-outs or expansions, we can quote the scope before you sign off so you know the cost going in.
Plumbing under a triple-net lease
Plumbing under NNN follows the same logic as HVAC and electrical. Everything inside the leased space is normally the tenant's, building-wide systems are normally the landlord's. The complication is water itself: a leak that starts in your space can damage other tenants' space, and a leak from the building can soak your space. Documentation matters.
What is normally the tenant's responsibility
- Fixtures inside the leased premises: toilets, sinks, faucets, water heaters serving only your space
- Drain lines inside the leased space, up to the point they tie into the building main
- Repair of any plumbing modification you or a prior tenant made
- Backflow preventers on tenant-served water lines
- Code-required upgrades triggered by tenant work
What is normally the landlord's
- The building's main water service from the utility meter
- The building-wide main sewer line and any shared waste lines
- Roof drainage, parking-lot drainage, and exterior drainage
- Grease interceptors that serve multiple tenants, with carve-outs for restaurants
Where it gets gray
- A drain line backs up where your line ties into the main. Is the cause inside your space (tenant) or downstream in the main (landlord)? A camera inspection answers the question, and we provide that documentation.
- Water leaks from your space damage the unit below. Insurance becomes the first conversation, but the underlying maintenance responsibility is in the lease.
- A water heater serving multiple tenants in a strip-retail block fails. Depends on whether it is yours (sole-tenant) or common (shared).
What we provide
When we open a plumbing job, we document the system as we find it: supply lines, drain lines, fixtures, water-heater age and condition. If we trace a problem to the building main or a shared line, you have evidence to escalate to the landlord. The invoice is line-itemed and the report is written so the landlord (or their property management company) can read it without translation.
Two more line items your lease probably puts on you
The big three are where the money and the urgency are, but they are not the whole list. Two other items show up in most DFW commercial leases, and tenants tend to find them the same way they find the HVAC clause, which is late.
Recurring AC maintenance the lease requires
Most commercial leases put HVAC maintenance on the tenant, usually an inspect and clean twice a year. It is a service obligation rather than a repair, and it is owed whether or not anything is broken. Two things go wrong when it slides. The unit fails earlier than it had to, and the landlord asks for service records you cannot produce.
We run that visit on a schedule we keep track of. We inspect the rooftop unit or split system, clean it, flag what we find, and leave you a dated line-item record for the lease file. That record is the document a landlord asks for. See commercial HVAC maintenance for what the visit covers.
This is scheduled and quoted work rather than a same-day call. If the unit is already down, that is a repair, and it is covered in the HVAC section above.
The parking lot outside your door
Pavement is the item tenants assume belongs to somebody else. Often it does not, and even when the landlord arranges the work, the cost usually comes back to you. Lot repair is commonly a common area maintenance item, which means the landlord can pay the contractor and then charge it through in the annual CAM reconciliation. You pay either way. The difference is whether you saw the scope and the invoice at the time, or found the number twelve months later in a reconciliation statement.
The lease decides which of the two it is. Some leases put pavement repair on the tenant to arrange directly. Others keep it with the landlord and recover it through CAM. Drainage structure, including roof drainage and lot drainage, normally stays with the landlord. Read the common area maintenance clause and the repair clause together before you agree to pay for either one.
We cut out and patch failed sections, in concrete or asphalt, including broken-up spots in truck yards and drive lanes. We do not do full lots, resurfacing, or new slabs. If the whole lot is finished, we will tell you straight and you can bring in a paving contractor. See parking lot patching.
Your lease is the final word
Everything on this page is the operator view of how DFW commercial leases normally apportion HVAC, electrical, and plumbing responsibility. Your specific lease may carve things up differently, may cap tenant exposure on capital-replacement events, may name an approved vendor list, or may require landlord consent above a dollar threshold.
Texas commercial leases are governed primarily by the lease document itself. Texas Property Code Chapter 93 (Commercial Tenancies) provides a thin statutory baseline, far less prescriptive than the residential side, which is why what your lease says about repair and maintenance responsibility is effectively the law for your space. There is no statutory default that overrides an NNN lease's repair clauses.
Read your lease before authorizing major work. If the lease is ambiguous on a specific question, ask your landlord in writing, and keep the written reply. We will not give legal advice and we will not interpret your lease for you. What we do is document the work we perform in a way that makes a landlord conversation easier.
When you call us, the invoice is itemized, the scope is in writing, and the documentation supports a clean CAM reconciliation. Any work beyond the original quote gets approved by you, in writing, before we start. That is the most useful thing a trades vendor can do for a commercial tenant on a triple-net lease.