A credit tenant lease is a method of financing real estate. The landlord borrows money to finance the property and pledges as security the rents to be received from the tenant. Usually, the financing is structured as nonrecourse debt, and the lease is structured as a triple net lease.
Credit tenant leases may be created either in sale/leaseback transactions, or new purchase transactions.
A credit tenant is usually an organization with a national footprint, a large regional tenant, or a local tenant with excellent credit that may be better than their national competitors. Only larger companies are called credit tenants. A lender will offer better financing terms for a development with a certain amount of space preleased or currently leased to credit tenants.