How is an expense stop different from a base year?

Both limit what the landlord passes through, but an expense stop is a fixed dollar amount per SF while a base year is a reference to actual costs in a specific year. An expense stop is more predictable; a base year creates more variability depending on what the base year costs actually were.

Can CAMAudit detect overcharges tied to an expense stop?

CAMAudit's escalation baseline check applies to expense stop structures as well. If the landlord is billing for costs that do not exceed the stop, or is using the wrong denominator to compute the per-SF overage, the rule flags the discrepancy.

Lease Terms & Dates

Expense Stop

Last updated: May 2026

A dollar threshold, typically set at the base year's per-square-foot operating cost, above which the tenant pays their share of operating expense increases. The landlord covers all costs up to the expense stop; costs above it are passed through to tenants.

Firm impact

Expense stops operate similarly to base year structures but are expressed as a dollar amount per SF rather than a year reference. When the expense stop was set during a low-cost period, the pass-through begins earlier than tenants expect. Validating the stop amount against actual base-year costs is a key audit step in gross and modified-gross engagements.

How this gets abused

A landlord set an expense stop of $9.00/SF based on 2019 expenses. By intentionally deferring $1.2M of maintenance to 2020 (the year after the lease started), actual costs jumped to $12.50/SF, pushing large escalations above the stop in the very first year.

Practitioner note

Check the property's maintenance history before finalizing the stop amount for a new client lease. Deferred maintenance in the base period will result in above-stop charges in the early lease years, a pattern that looks like normal operations but is an avoidable cost.