Can my buyer negotiate their own new lease terms as part of buying my business?

Yes, this can happen, though it's a different path from a straightforward assignment of your existing lease. Instead of taking an assignment of your current lease as-is, a buyer and the landlord can agree to negotiate a brand-new lease directly between them — sometimes because the buyer wants different terms, sometimes because the landlord prefers it, and sometimes because your existing lease is close to expiry anyway and a fresh lease makes more practical sense than assigning a term that's about to run out.

This shifts the transaction meaningfully: your old lease would typically need to be surrendered or otherwise terminated as part of the process, and the value you're selling shifts from "an assigned leasehold interest with existing rent" to a business without a locked-in space, backed instead by whatever your buyer separately negotiates with the landlord.

Because a new lease changes what your buyer is actually getting — and what you can represent about the lease in your purchase agreement — this needs to be reflected clearly in your deal terms rather than assumed to work like an ordinary assignment. A Treadstone business lawyer can help structure the sale around whichever path you and the landlord actually pursue.