What useful life should a new commercial roof have?

A new commercial roof typically has a useful life of 20 to 25 years depending on the roofing material (TPO, EPDM, BUR). Amortizing a roof replacement over fewer than 15 years is generally unsupportable and constitutes an overcharge.

Does CAMAudit check whether amortization periods match standard useful lives?

When CAMAudit identifies amortized capital items in a reconciliation, it compares the amortization schedule against standard useful-life benchmarks. If the landlord is using a shorter schedule to accelerate cost recovery, CAMAudit flags the overcharge.

Financial Concepts

Useful Life

Last updated: May 2026

The expected service life of a building component or asset, used to determine depreciation and amortization schedules. In CAM disputes, artificially short useful lives inflate amortized capital expense pass-throughs.

Firm impact

When a landlord amortizes capital expenditures over a shorter-than-standard useful life, the annual tenant charge increases proportionally. A roof amortized over 10 years instead of 25 years generates 2.5 times the annual bill. Benchmarking against IRS or ASHRAE standards gives your firm a defensible comparison point.

How this gets abused

A landlord amortized elevator modernization ($250,000) over 7 years rather than the industry-standard 20 years. Tenants paid $35,714 per year instead of $12,500 per year, an overcharge of $23,214 per year.

Practitioner note

Request the useful life assumption for any amortized capital item in the CAM pool. Compare it against IRS Publication 946 or the relevant ASHRAE guideline. Challenge any useful life shorter than those benchmarks in the audit findings.