A Legal Study On First Refusal To Lease

In the process of market economic development, house tenancy acts as a growing number of social behaviors in daily life and its trend becomes more and more complicated. It also becomes one of the very important civil legal relationships from legal sense. New problems occur repeatedly which result in increasing trend of disputes about priority right to lease, coupled with many discussions in the law circle. When this article talks about first refusal to lease, it narrowly refers to first refusal to lease the house. The article tries to illustrate from standpoint of disadvantaged lessee who needs protection, considers interests of both the lessor and the lessee comprehensively and then makes certain analysis on the legal issue of first refusal to lease.Below are the discussions on the legal issues of first refusal to lease which are divided into several parts:First part is about the basic theory of the first refusal to lease. To understand the first refusal to lease, comprehension on civil priority right is needed firstly. This article concludes its basic definition from several different viewpoints about the concepts and comprehensions of civil priority right in the legal circle, and then classifies the civil priority right. Classification research on civil priority right lays certain foundation for concept and property of first refusal to lease. This article sets limit on first refusal to lease, that is it only concerns rental problems between parties and does not involve the category of personal movable property leasing. Meanwhile, this house tenancy includes leasing for both living and business. After a clear definition about legal issues of first refusal to lease, certain comparison and clarification have been carried to its concept. Since first refusal to lease is not defined directly in law in practice, there is no uniform standard in case trial and also the court’s decision varies.Second part of the article lists related dispute cases. Some courts support the lessee’s priority right of tenant in the judicial practice, however the blank of law make it impossible to get effective guarantee for lessee’s interest. Hence the focus of disputes is concluded: is it necessary to protect priority right of tenant? What is the property of priority right of tenant? How to implement priority right of tenant? All these questions are the key contents of this article.Third part mainly illustrates the French commercial lease renewal right system. The commercial lease renewal right appeared in France to protect the rights and interests of lessee due to the destruction of war, moreover the commercial leasing system is gradually established with constant practice and summary. Since legislation of French priority right to lease is relatively mature, this part introduces background, applicable range and limitation of French commercial lease renewal right, also this has certain reference to build the corresponding first refusal to lease system in China. It is of certain significance for evaluating priority right of tenant from several aspects later.With the above three parts’ argument as the foundation, the fourth part evaluates right of first refusal to lease from the following aspects, legal nature, legal characteristics, the understanding of "equal terms" and the comparison with right of first refusal to purchase. Hence the article proposes how to build first refusal to lease ystem in China in terms of the more comprehensive and in-depth understanding and analysis.Related rules of priority right to lease have already appeared in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Xiamen, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, Xinjiang and other places, they are not confirmed by laws and administrative regulations yet. Therefore, fifth part of the article raises some suggestions to establish first refusal to lease system in China from these aspects, legislation necessity, protection scope, exercise conditions, conflict solution, proper reasons for excluding the exercise of priority right to lease, relief approach when priority right of tenant is infringed, etc.Restricted by China’s economic development, the protection for the lessee’s priority to lease is relatively deficient, and it needs to constantly summarize in practice, draw on the successful experience of other countries, and determine the related systems by means of legal regulations. Through the exploration and discussion of the above-mentioned five parts, this article expects that the academia and the legislative branch can pay more attention to it, timely make up the vacancy on law, effectively protect the interests of vulnerable groups and stabilize the social economic order.