How does CAMAudit detect overcharges?

CAMAudit runs 14 deterministic detection rules on your uploaded lease and CAM reconciliation statement. Each rule checks a specific billing mechanism: fee calculations, pro-rata share formulas, gross-up provisions, caps, and expense classifications. Rules are triggered only when your documents contain the relevant terms.

What documents do I need to upload?

You need your commercial lease (including all addenda) and your CAM reconciliation statement from your landlord. Both are required. Upload the most recent reconciliation statement first; you can add prior years afterward to check for multi-year overcharges.

How much does a CAMAudit scan cost?

The free scan runs the full pipeline at no cost and shows your total potential recovery. Unlock the full report with line-item findings and a dispute letter draft for a flat fee. No contingency fees. You keep 100% of any recovery.

How long does it take to get results?

The full audit pipeline runs in under 15 minutes for most documents.

My Rent Went Up 40% and My Landlord Won't Explain Why

You open the envelope, see the number, and your stomach drops. Your total occupancy costs jumped 40% and the only thing your landlord sent was a single-page summary with a final balance due. No detail. No backup. Just a bigger number than last year.

If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. This is one of the most common situations commercial tenants post about on r/smallbusiness, and it almost always comes from the same place: a CAM reconciliation you were not expecting.

Here's what most tenants miss: the amount is not automatically correct just because a landlord sent it. And the clock is already running on your right to dispute it.

What is a CAM reconciliation, anyway?

Most commercial leases require tenants to pay estimated CAM (Common Area Maintenance) charges throughout the year. At year-end, the landlord reconciles actual expenses against what you paid. If actual costs exceeded estimates, you owe the difference. That difference is the "true-up."

The problem is that true-ups can include overcharges, misclassifications, and math errors, and landlords are not incentivized to catch those errors for you.

A 40% increase in your total occupancy cost is a significant signal that something in the reconciliation may be wrong. That does not mean the landlord is lying. It does mean you need to look.

The difference between base rent increases and CAM overcharges

These are two different things, and conflating them is a costly mistake.

Base rent increases are governed by your lease's rent escalation clause. If your lease says rent increases 3% per year, that is contractual. You agreed to it. Not much to dispute there.

CAM charges are a separate line. They cover operating expenses for the shared areas of the property: parking lots, lobbies, landscaping, HVAC systems, management fees. These costs are supposed to be actual, allowable, documented expenses. Your lease defines what is included and excluded.

When your landlord cannot explain a 40% increase, the problem is almost always in the CAM portion, not the base rent. And CAM charges have significantly more room for error.

What you have the right to request

Your lease almost certainly includes an audit rights clause. It gives you the right to inspect the supporting documentation behind the reconciliation. Specifically, you can request:

General ledger entries or expense detail for the reconciliation year
Invoices for major line items (especially anything that jumped significantly year over year)
The occupancy schedule used to calculate your pro-rata share
Management fee calculation detail
Any capital expenditure support (CapEx items should generally not be in CAM)

Send this request in writing. Keep a copy. The date you send it matters because it starts the clock on your landlord's obligation to respond.

Here's why that matters: if your landlord ignores or stonewalls the documentation request, that behavior itself becomes relevant if you escalate the dispute later.

Your audit window is already closing

This is the part tenants find out about too late.

Most commercial leases include an audit window, typically 60 to 180 days from the date the reconciliation statement is delivered. Once that window closes, you generally waive your right to formally dispute the charges, even if you later discover errors.

So if the reconciliation arrived last week and you are just now asking questions, you have time. But do not waste it.

Check your lease for language like "tenant shall have X days after receipt of the reconciliation statement to audit." That is your deadline.

4-step action plan

Step 1: Document when you received the statement. Save the email, the envelope postmark, or the portal notification. The audit window runs from the delivery date, so you need to prove when it started.

Step 2: Pull your lease. Specifically find the CAM definition, the exclusions list, the management fee cap, and the audit rights clause. These four sections will tell you what you are allowed to challenge.

Step 3: Send a written documentation request. Ask for the expense ledger and any invoices for line items that increased materially. Keep the tone neutral and reference the audit rights clause in your lease.

Step 4: Compare year over year. Before you can dispute anything, you need to know which line items drove the increase. A 40% jump in total costs usually traces back to one or two specific categories.

More on what to look for once you have the documents below.

Red flags that indicate an actual overcharge

Not every increase is an error, but certain patterns appear repeatedly in disputed reconciliations:

Management fees calculated on a higher base than the lease allows
CapEx items (roof replacement, parking lot repaving, HVAC equipment) billed as operating expenses
Your pro-rata share percentage is higher than it should be, often because the denominator excludes certain tenants
Insurance costs passed through at more than your actual allocated share
Line items for services that benefit only the landlord or other tenants

If you see any of these, the dispute becomes much more concrete. You are not just saying "this feels high." You are pointing to a specific calculation error tied to a specific lease term.

What to do if your landlord still won't explain

You have a few options, in order of escalation:

Send a formal written dispute referencing your lease audit rights. This puts the landlord on record and creates a paper trail. If you ultimately have to involve an attorney, this documentation matters.

Consider running a CAM audit. I built CAMAudit because this process was too opaque for most tenants to do alone. You upload your lease and reconciliation statement, and our tool identifies specific finding types against your actual lease terms, not generic heuristics.

If the amount at issue is significant and the landlord is unresponsive, consulting a commercial real estate attorney is worth the cost. Many attorneys will do a one-hour consult for a few hundred dollars, which is nothing compared to a multi-thousand-dollar overcharge.

The free scan is a good starting point

If you are not sure whether what you received constitutes an overcharge, or you want to know before you escalate, you can run a free CAM scan at CAMAudit. Upload your reconciliation statement and lease, and the scan runs our 14-point detection engine against the documents. You get a summary of potential findings before you pay anything.

Given that your audit window is already running, the time to start is now.