Building Common Area Lighting: CAM Line Item Audit Guide

What Building Common Area Lighting Covers

Building common area lighting covers the electricity and maintenance costs for all interior shared spaces: lobbies, corridors, stairwells, shared restrooms, and mechanical rooms. In a standard NNN lease, tenants pay a pro-rata share of these costs as part of the annual CAM reconciliation. Three dispute patterns recur most frequently in this category. First, landlords bundle tenant suite electricity with common area electricity because without sub-metering, they cannot distinguish the two and estimates typically over-allocate to tenants. Second, landlords apply a management markup to utility pass-throughs, treating electricity as a revenue line rather than a cost pass-through. Most leases prohibit this, but tenants cannot identify it without seeing the actual utility bills. Third, full lighting system replacements including panel upgrades and complete fixture overhauls are passed through as maintenance costs in a single year rather than being amortized as capital expenditures. Tenants should request copies of the actual utility bills, verify the kWh rate on the reconciliation matches the rate on the bill, and demand that any electrical panel or system upgrade be treated as a capital expenditure subject to amortization.