What are the most commonly misclassified common area expenses?

HVAC maintenance for exclusive tenant areas, janitorial services for single-tenant floors, and signage costs for individual tenant storefronts. All of these are costs the relevant tenant should bear exclusively, not the entire CAM pool.

Does CAMAudit detect common area misclassification?

Yes. CAMAudit's Common Area Misclassification rule flags expense line items that appear to relate to non-common spaces based on the descriptions in the reconciliation and the lease's definition of common areas.

Building Operations

Common Area

Last updated: May 2026

The shared portions of a commercial property accessible to all tenants and visitors: lobbies, hallways, parking lots, restrooms, elevators, and landscaped areas. Only legitimate common area expenses should be included in the CAM pool.

Firm Impact

Misclassification of non-common-area expenses into the CAM pool, such as maintenance for a single-tenant exclusive area billed to all tenants, is one of the 20 detection rules CAMAudit runs. It is more common in multi-tenant office and retail settings than landlords typically acknowledge.

How This Gets Abused

A landlord included HVAC maintenance for anchor tenant exclusive areas in the common area pool and allocated it across all smaller tenants via pro-rata share. The anchor tenant did not contribute. Smaller tenants subsidized a $40,000 annual HVAC bill for space they had no access to.

Practitioner Note

Request the property map or floor plan alongside the reconciliation. Verify that each expense category in the CAM pool traces to areas defined as common in the lease. Any maintenance or service that primarily benefits a single tenant's space should be excluded.