While we hope the virus will soon be a thing of the past, some contractual provisions and issues are sure to become part of real estate professionals’ new normal. As a result of lessons learned from the pandemic, most real estate agreements, such as leases, financing documents and contracts, warrant consideration of new provisions that are likely here to stay.

Force majeure. No provision has been more scrutinized in the months following the March 2020 lockdowns than the “force majeure” clause (a provision that, under certain circumstances, can either release or postpone contractual obligations). Throughout the pandemic, practitioners have been trying to interpret, and reinterpret, force majeure clauses to determine if the pandemic qualified as a force majeure event. Conversely, if a contract did notinclude a force majeure provision, most everyone in California, for example, quickly became familiar with Section 1511 of the California Civil Code, which is California’s default “force majeure” statute and applies to contracts without express force majeure clauses.