This seems to be similar to this issue: False "Property does not exist on type 'never'" when changing value inside callback with strictNullChecks
, which is closed as a duplicate of this issue (discussion): Trade-offs in Control Flow Analysis.
That discussion is pretty long, if you can't find a good solution there you can try this:
if (instance == null) {
console.log('Instance is null or undefined');
} else {
console.log(instance!.name); // ok now
}