BOMA 2024 vs 2017: What Changed and What It Costs You
On a 250,000 RSF office building, adopting BOMA 2024 produced an additional $445,500 in annual NOI — from no new tenants, no capex, and no rent bumps. Just different math. For property controllers, wrong denominators produce wrong tenant bills, which produce disputes and clawbacks.
What Changed: BOMA 2017 vs. BOMA 2024
| What Changed | BOMA 2017 | BOMA 2024 | Financial Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ground-level outdoor amenities | Excluded from RSF | Patios, terraces, courtyards now included | Expands RSF pool; raises billable denominator |
| Balconies & rooftop terraces | Load factor penalty applied | Penalty eliminated; measured at 100% | Eliminates RSF discount on premium amenity space |
| Base building circulation (Method B) | Complex multi-step allocation | Simplified proportional floor allocation | Reduces disputes; typical RSF increase per floor |
| Tenant storage areas | Multiple classification buckets | Single streamlined category | Fewer CAM exclusions; cleaner pro-rata allocation |
| Single-tenant equipment shafts | Excluded or ambiguous | Explicitly billable RSF | Incremental NOI recovery on previously excluded space |
Net effect across a typical portfolio: 2–5% RSF increase per building.
What This Means for Your Pro-Rata Calculations
A larger RSF denominator changes every tenant's pro-rata share — even if the CAM pool itself doesn't grow. Two tenants with identical leases can end up with different bills if one lease was signed under 2017 measurements and the other under 2024 measurements. That gap isn't a rounding error; it's a structural mismatch baked into your billing system.
Mixed-vintage lease books are the real landmine. When you have 2017-era leases sitting beside tenants whose space was certified under 2024 methodology, you're running two different denominators in the same pool without realizing it. That mismatch compounds every reconciliation cycle — year one it's a rounding issue, year three it's a dispute, year five it's an audit demand from counsel.
The place this surfaces earliest is GL coding. If your expense categories don't map cleanly to your measurement standard, controllers end up manually reconciling line items that should close automatically. Before you re-measure or renegotiate, lock down your coding discipline first — see the GL Coding Guide for the specific categories where 2024 changes the inclusion/exclusion calculus.
What You Need to Do Now
- 1
Pull your current BOMA measurement report — confirm 2017 vs. 2024 and the last certification date. If the report is more than three years old, the number in your billing system may not reflect actual certified RSF.
- 2
Reconcile lease RSF vs. measured RSF for every tenant — flag gaps greater than 1%. Anything above that threshold is material in a reconciliation dispute.
- 3
Audit billing system denominators — your system is almost certainly running frozen lease-execution RSF, not current certified RSF. Identify which leases allow re-measurement and which lock in the execution-date figure.
- 4
Run the numbers before you make any move — the CAM Leakage Estimator calculates dollar exposure across your tenant roster. Three inputs, hard output.
- 5
Get lease counsel sign-off before re-measuring — BOMA 2024 adoption typically requires a lease amendment or formal notice. Switching methodology unilaterally creates exactly the dispute you were trying to prevent.
Calculate Your Hidden SF — Free
Use the BOMA 2024 Rentable Area Calculator to see exactly how many additional billable square feet your building gains under the 2024 standard.
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