A CAM audit checks your landlord's annual reconciliation for billing errors. 40% of statements contain mistakes. Learn what it covers and when to run one.
Run the audit before you decide whether this applies to your lease.
Find My OverchargesFind overcharges in your CAM reconciliation. Most audits complete in under 5 minutes.
Find My OverchargesSee a sample report firstA common area maintenance audit (CAM audit) is a forensic review of your landlord's annual CAM reconciliation statement. It verifies that every charge billed to you falls within the limits and categories your lease permits.
Tango Analytics (2023) found material errors in 40% of commercial reconciliations. PredictAP estimates $15 billion in annual overcharges go unrecovered each year across U.S. commercial real estate. You are probably paying more than your lease requires. The question is how much.
You don't need a professional auditor to find these errors. You need the right analysis against your specific lease, run against the actual numbers your landlord submitted.
Use this guide if you need to answer one of three questions quickly:
If you already want to inspect the finished output, open the sample report. If you want to test your own lease and reconciliation first, start your free audit.
Most CAM errors are systematic, not accidental. Wrong pro-rata denominators, management fees calculated on inflated bases, capital projects buried in operating expenses: these patterns repeat year after year until someone catches them. The problem is that landlords prepare the reconciliation and tenants typically receive only a summary. Without running the underlying math against the lease, the errors stay hidden.
Here's what running a CAM audit actually gives you:
You find out whether errors exist before committing to a dispute. The free scan shows your total potential recovery and finding count before you pay anything. If nothing turns up, you have confirmation your billing is clean.
You get the specific numbers you need to dispute. Effective dispute letter drafts don't just assert overcharges. They cite the lease provision, show the calculation, and quantify the difference. CAMAudit generates that document pre-populated with your data.
You recover from prior years, not just the current one. Most leases give tenants audit rights covering 1 to 3 prior years. State contract law may extend that further. A single review can surface recovery from multiple billing periods.
You audit at the beginning, not after the dispute window closes. Most leases give tenants 30 to 180 days after statement delivery to challenge errors. Waiting is costly. For a comparison of tools that can help, see the CAM audit software guide.
You know your actual cost basis before lease renewal. CAM charges that compounded incorrectly for three years become the baseline for the next term if you don't catch them. For what to do once findings are confirmed, see what happens after a CAM audit finds overcharges.
“When I started building CAMAudit, I assumed most errors would be accidental. After processing hundreds of reconciliations, the management fee calculation errors appear too consistently to be coincidence. Landlords billing 5% when the lease says 3% is not a rounding issue.”
| DIY (No Audit) | Traditional Audit Firm | CAMAudit AI | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | $2,500 upfront + 33% contingency | First audit free, then $199–$699 to unlock |
| When you pay | No payment | Before you know the result | Only after seeing results |
| Your net on $20K recovery | $20,000 (if caught) | ~$10,900 (after $9,100 in fees) | $19,801 |
| Time to complete | Weeks | 4–8 weeks | Under 5 min |
| Accuracy | Variable | High | Deterministic (13 rules) |
| Dispute letter draft included | No | Extra cost | Included |
| Minimum viable for | Not recommended |
Key takeaway: A CAM audit verifies that every charge on your landlord's reconciliation falls within your lease limits, and material errors appear in 40% of statements across U.S. commercial properties.
Upload your lease. CAMAudit runs 13 detection rules in under 5 minutes.
Find My OverchargesCAMAudit runs 13 deterministic detection rules on every audit. These are the same methodologies a trained human auditor would apply:
“The free scan shows the total potential recovery before you pay anything. If CAMAudit finds nothing, you get a CAM Verified certificate. The break-even is recovering about $200 in overcharges, and on any lease with $5,000 or more in annual CAM, even a 4% error clears that threshold.”
A few situations where running an audit is worth it:
Break-even: At $199 for one audit, any annual CAM bill over $5,000 makes CAMAudit worth running. Tango Analytics (2023) found material errors in 40% of reconciliations, and PredictAP estimates $15 billion in annual overcharges go unrecovered across U.S. commercial real estate.
A lease review identifies what the lease says. A common area maintenance audit verifies whether the landlord's actual billing complies with those terms. Lease reviews are done before signing. CAM audits are done after receiving each annual reconciliation, against real numbers the landlord submitted.
Landlords prepare the reconciliation and tenants typically receive only a summary. Without running the underlying math against the lease, systematic errors go undetected for years. That's not a flaw in the process. It's the design.
Before sending a dispute letter draft, verify each of these items in your reconciliation. A complete CAM reconciliation audit guide covers all 12 overcharge categories with step-by-step instructions.
If you are still deciding whether this is worth the effort, do these two things in order:
The free scan answers the real BOFU question: "Is there enough money in my lease and reconciliation to justify action?"
| $100K+/yr CAM |
| Any CAM amount |