Major renovations, including lobby remodels, parking lot repaving, HVAC system replacements, and facade upgrades, are capital expenditures. In most NNN leases, capital expenditures are explicitly excluded from the operating expense pool that tenants pay through CAM. Landlords sometimes attempt to pass these costs through by amortizing them, relabeling them as "repairs," or splitting them across multiple smaller invoices. CAMAudit detects each of these patterns.
TL;DR
Renovation costs can be five to six figures; allowing them into the CAM pool inflates your base for years to come.
Who this is for
Tenants who noticed large charges on their CAM reconciliation coinciding with a building renovation and want to verify whether those costs should have been excluded as capital expenditures.
Who this is not for
Tenants whose lease explicitly allows the landlord to amortize and pass through capital improvements, or tenants who signed a lease amendment agreeing to share renovation costs.
Common Area Misclassification
CAMAudit identifies line items that describe renovation, remodeling, replacement, or upgrade work and flags them as capital expenditures that should be excluded from the operating CAM pool.
Excluded Service Charges
The scan cross-references renovation charges against your lease exclusion list to confirm that capital expenditures are prohibited from tenant cost recovery.
Controllable Expense Cap Overcharge
If renovation costs were included in controllable expenses, CAMAudit verifies whether the total controllable expense amount exceeds your lease cap, which it likely does when large capital items are improperly included.
Upload two PDFs. 14 detection rules. Under 15 minutes. Free.
Next Best Step
Scenario pages should bridge from diagnosis into the dispute path and audit proof.
Use the audit process if you still need to validate the billing error.
Use the dispute playbook if the issue is already active.
Run the free audit once you are ready to quantify the overcharge.
Ready to skip the reading and document the overcharge directly?
Find My OverchargesNeed to extract lease terms before your audit?
A CAM audit is only as accurate as your lease data. lextract.io extracts 126 structured fields from any commercial lease PDF: CAM definitions, pro-rata share, caps, base year, and audit rights. So you have the exact terms your landlord is supposed to follow.
Go to lextract.ioThis page provides general educational information. It is not legal advice and may not reflect the most current law in your state. Consult a licensed attorney for advice specific to your situation.
