I mostly ask because I'm not fully sure what should be fair for all parties involved. Restaurants, bookstores and offices shouldn't fail because they can survive a once in a hundred year plague. Neither should property owners who are leasing said property. But I don't understand the rules in this situation. You may be preaching about how you're in it together, but if your tenant goes under you may be screwed on your loan payments.
Its not like defering the rent is neccesarily in the best interest (from a purely ecconomic perspective of the landlord). If you defer rent for many months only for tenant to go under when this ends (and lets be real, many tenants are going to go under when this is all said and done), the landlord would be better off being heartless and not defering rent
During the high of the coronavirus outbreak, for individual or company, one could call the banks to postpone mortgages, loans or credit card payment for 1 to 3 months. Business may get longer extension if the situation worsen. That was possible in February, less so now as life turns normal gradually since March. Work resumed, shopping mall reopened etc. schools still closed though.
As for rent, Business tenants negotiate with landlord for rent forgiveness, something like half month or one month rent.
In it together would be rent forgiveness.
The bookstore and restaurant have lost business, their customers aren't deferring payments with a gradual payback.
Being "in it together" means he's giving them time to repay the back rent instead of evicting them if they can't pay, as he legally could. Commercial lease tenants have far fewer rights than residential ones do.
It's easy to spout "rent forgiveness" but where is that money coming from?
Maybe OP is struggling making their own payments because they don't have the rent money. But ultimately it seems the bookstore ends up with the rough end of the deal. The landlord will recover deferred rent, but the bookstore will not get their lost business back.
To clarify, I applaud OP for doing something that eases the stress of payment. But I think the wording could have been better.
I said it was a nice gesture, and it is, but to me in the long run (assuming the book store doesn't go out of business) you still get your pound of flesh, you just get it a bit later, that's not really suffering together.