NNN tenants are routinely billed for fees buried in vague lease language: admin markups, management fees on excluded costs, amortized capital improvements, and shared-building occupancy expenses.
TL;DR
Disputing hidden fees requires proving they are excluded under your lease. If the lease language is vague, recovery is harder, but often still possible.
Who this is for
Tenants in NNN or modified gross leases who found line items in their reconciliation that were not clearly discussed during lease signing.
Who this is not for
Tenants in gross leases where CAM is not a pass-through. This scenario is specific to NNN and modified gross lease structures.
Excluded Service Charges
Items like executive salaries, depreciation, and leasing commissions are typically excluded from NNN CAM per lease definition.
Management Fee Overcharge
Admin fees and management markups are often charged on top of the disclosed management fee, inflating CAM.
Common Area Misclassification
Capital improvements and building-wide expenses are misclassified as common area operating costs.
Gross Lease Charges
For tenants with hybrid leases, certain components may be covered by base rent but billed again through CAM.
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.
