What to Do When Your Landlord Ignores Your CAM Dispute

A landlord who ignores your CAM dispute letter is not necessarily being evasive — sometimes property management teams are understaffed, letters get routed incorrectly, or the dispute landed in someone's inbox who isn't sure what to do with it. But after 30 days with no response, you need to escalate. Here is the path.

Table of Contents

1. Confirm the Letter Was Received
2. Send a Follow-Up Notice
3. Formally Invoke Your Audit Rights
4. Escalate to Dispute Resolution Mechanisms
5. Consider Litigation
6. What Not to Do
7. Frequently Asked Questions

1. Confirm the Letter Was Received

Before assuming your landlord is ignoring you, verify delivery. If you sent the original letter by certified mail, check the USPS tracking record and confirm the delivery date. If you sent by overnight courier, pull the delivery confirmation. If the delivery record shows the letter was received but no response came, proceed to step 2.

If the delivery record shows the letter was returned undeliverable — the wrong address, the recipient had moved, the property management company had changed — you may need to resend. Check the lease's Notices clause for the current required address. If the landlord's address has changed and the lease hasn't been updated by a formal amendment, sending to the original address in the lease may still satisfy your contractual obligation. Document your attempt.

2. Send a Follow-Up Notice

Thirty days after the original deadline with no response, send a second written notice. Reference the original letter by date and your stated deadline. Keep it brief:

"This follows our letter dated [original date] disputing $24,000 in CAM overcharges for the 2024 reconciliation period. The deadline for your response was [date]. We have not received a response. Please confirm receipt of our original letter and provide your substantive response within 15 days. If we do not receive a response by [new date], we will proceed with a formal audit request under Section 8.3(d) of the Lease."

Send this the same way as the original: certified mail, overnight courier, or whatever your lease requires. The paper trail matters — if this dispute eventually goes to mediation or litigation, the timeline of your attempts to resolve it in good faith is relevant evidence.

3. Formally Invoke Your Audit Rights

Most commercial leases include an audit rights clause that entitles the tenant to inspect the landlord's accounting records supporting the CAM reconciliation. If you have not already done so, now is the time to invoke this right formally.

A proper audit rights invocation is a separate written notice that:

• Cites the specific lease section granting audit rights
• States the period(s) to be audited
• Identifies who will conduct the audit (you, your accountant, or a professional audit firm)
• Requests a specific location and time frame for records inspection

Most audit rights clauses require the tenant to give notice within a specified window (often 90 to 180 days of receiving the reconciliation statement). If you are still within that window, invoke now. If you are past it, check whether your lease has a broader dispute resolution provision that is separate from the reconciliation audit window — some do.

Once you formally invoke audit rights, the landlord's obligation to cooperate with the audit is a lease covenant. Failure to provide records is itself a potential breach, which gives you additional leverage and a separate legal claim.

4. Escalate to Dispute Resolution Mechanisms

Most commercial leases require some form of dispute resolution before litigation — mediation is common, binding arbitration is increasingly standard.

Mediation is non-binding: both parties present their positions to a neutral mediator, who facilitates negotiation. AAA data shows that commercial mediations resolve within a median of 114 days, and roughly half to two-thirds of business disputes settle before or at the hearing. Mediation is less expensive than litigation and keeps the relationship intact. If your lease requires mediation before any other escalation, trigger it in writing by the process specified in your lease.

Arbitration is binding: a neutral arbitrator (or panel) hears both sides and issues an enforceable award. AAA's 2024 data show median time to award in B2B arbitrations ranging from approximately 2 to 19 months depending on claim size. Arbitration is faster than federal court litigation (median time to jury trial is roughly 32 months) but can be expensive if the claim is large enough to require in-person hearings.

Neither option is available if you ignore the contractual sequence. If your lease says mediation first, you cannot bypass it and file in court without risking your case being dismissed for failure to exhaust dispute resolution requirements.

5. Consider Litigation

If mediation fails or the lease does not require it, and the claim amount justifies the cost, litigation is the final option. A few things to know before going this route:

Small claims or limited jurisdiction court handles CAM disputes under roughly $10,000–$25,000 in most states. No attorney required, faster resolution, lower cost.

Breach of contract litigation for larger claims can be filed in state court. You are claiming that the landlord's overcharge breached the lease's operating expense provisions. Discovery — the formal process of requesting records — gives you access to the full accounting ledger you may not have gotten through the audit rights process.

Seek declaratory relief if you want a court to establish the correct calculation methodology going forward, not just recover past overcharges.

Attorney fees matter. Some commercial leases include fee-shifting provisions that allow the prevailing party to recover attorney fees. If yours does and your claim is well-documented, the landlord's calculus on settlement changes significantly.

6. What Not to Do

Do not withhold rent. In commercial leases, the obligation to pay rent is an independent covenant. Withholding rent to force resolution of a CAM dispute has backfired spectacularly in documented cases. In Tolou Realty Assocs. v. Dolphin Diner Corp. (N.Y. App. Term, 2025), tenants who withheld rent pending a dispute were ordered to pay over $721,000 in arrears and vacate the premises. The CAM dispute did not excuse the nonpayment. Pay what is documented and undisputed while pursuing the overcharge separately.

Do not make threats you cannot back up. Threatening to report a management fee calculation error to state regulators is not credible and undermines the rest of your letter. Stick to remedies that are actually available under your lease and applicable law.

Do not let the dispute drag past your windows. If your lease has a 90-day audit window or a 120-day dispute window, every day you wait is a day you may be losing your contractual right to dispute. Document your timeline carefully.

Do not ignore a landlord response that disputes your math. If the landlord responds with a different calculation, you need to engage with it specifically. A landlord who provides a substantive response has moved into negotiation, not avoidance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How long should I wait before sending a follow-up? A: The standard practice is 30 days from your stated response deadline. If you gave a 30-day deadline in the original letter and 30 days have passed beyond that, you are 60 days from sending — that is the right time for a follow-up.

Q: What if the landlord says they never received my letter? A: Produce your delivery confirmation. If you sent by certified mail or overnight courier, you have a receipt showing delivery date. If the landlord claims the letter went to the wrong person internally, that is their logistics problem, not yours — as long as you sent to the address required by the lease. Resend to any additional addresses they identify, but note in the new letter that this is a re-send referencing the original delivery.

Q: Can I dispute verbally while the written dispute process is running? A: Yes, conversations and meetings are fine. But never withdraw or modify your written dispute based on a verbal conversation or promise. Any agreement reached verbally needs to be confirmed in writing before you release the formal dispute. "We'll take care of it" is not a settlement.

Q: My landlord responded with a general denial. What now? A: A general denial is not a substantive response. Write back and ask specifically which of your calculations are disputed and on what basis. If they cannot or will not provide specific disagreements with your numbers, that is itself informative — it may mean they do not have a strong defense and are hoping you will give up.

Q: Do I need an attorney at this stage? A: Not necessarily, though it depends on the amount and the landlord's response. If the landlord has retained counsel and is responding through their attorney, you should consider doing the same. See When to Hire a Lawyer for a CAM Dispute for a threshold analysis.

Q: What if the landlord agrees to a partial settlement? A: Take it if it is reasonable, but get it in writing. A settlement agreement should specify the amount to be credited or paid, the period it covers, and a statement that it resolves the dispute for that period. Be careful about signing anything with a general release that covers future periods — make sure the release is limited to the years you negotiated.

Sources: AAA, Commercial Arbitration Rules and Mediation Procedures (2024 data); CEDR Mediation Audit 2021 (CEDR is a UK commercial mediation body; practitioner findings on process dynamics are broadly applicable); Tolou Realty Assocs. v. Dolphin Diner Corp., N.Y. App. Term (2025); Schorr, "Fraudulent Common Area Overcharges in Commercial Leases," ABA Business Torts Journal (Fall 2008)

If your landlord is ignoring a dispute, the strongest position is a documented calculation. Run a free CAM audit at CamAudit to build your evidence base, then follow the full escalation path in the CAM Dispute Guide.