CAM Costs Per Square Foot: 2026 Benchmarks by Property Type

CAM charges — the operating expenses commercial tenants pay under NNN and modified gross leases — vary by a factor of 100 across property types. A bulk warehouse tenant in a Midwest distribution park might pay $0.50/SF annually. A medical office tenant in an on-campus hospital building pays $20/SF or more. Understanding where your property type falls on that spectrum is the first step in determining whether your annual CAM reconciliation reflects legitimate costs or contains overcharges.

This guide aggregates benchmark data from BOMA, ICSC, CBRE, and JLL publications to provide 2026 reference ranges for each major commercial property category. These numbers should function as a calibration tool — not a ceiling. Your actual costs will depend on building age, location, lease vintage, and operating standards. But if your reconciliation comes in significantly above the range for your property type, that's a flag worth investigating.

2026 CAM Benchmarks by Property Type

Property Type	CAM Range ($/SF/year)	National Avg (est.)	Primary Source
Bulk distribution / logistics	$0.15 – $0.75	$0.50	CBRE Industrial Report (2024)
Light industrial / flex	$1.50 – $3.00	$2.10	CBRE Industrial Report (2024)
Multi-tenant industrial park	$1.00 – $2.50	$1.80	JLL Industrial Outlook (2024)
Community/neighborhood retail	$3.00 – $6.00	$4.50	ICSC Research (2024)
Strip mall / power center	$4.00 – $8.00	$5.80	BOMA Experience Exchange (2023)
Restaurant / food service	$8.00 – $15.00	$9.40	ICSC Research (2024)
Fitness / gym	$6.00 – $12.00	$8.50

These ranges represent reported operating expenses from industry surveys. Your specific lease may have additional non-recurring items — capital assessment amortization, reserve contributions, one-time environmental compliance costs — that push costs above the range in any given year.

What Drives CAM Higher in Some Property Types?

Medical Office: The Infrastructure Premium

Medical office buildings carry CAM 2–3x higher than comparable office buildings for several legitimate reasons: HEPA or MERV-13+ HVAC filtration, backup power infrastructure, medical gas system maintenance, and enhanced janitorial standards. When on-campus hospital MOBs reach $20+/SF, a significant portion reflects genuine infrastructure cost sharing with the host hospital.

The overcharge risk in MOBs is different from other property types: costs specific to one tenant's specialty (biohazard handling, specialized HVAC for imaging equipment) sometimes enter the shared pool. See Medical Office CAM Charges for the detailed breakdown.

Regional Mall: High Pool, Anchor Exclusion Distortion

Regional mall in-line tenants pay $8–$14/SF because the total CAM pool is large — extensive common areas, parking structures, security, and event programming. But anchor tenants covering 40–60% of gross leasable area often contribute nothing to the pool, inflating each in-line tenant's effective share.

A mall where the anchor exclusion inflates each tenant's denominator by 50% effectively doubles the per-SF CAM impact for in-line tenants compared to what the benchmark range suggests. The $10/SF national average for in-line retail can represent the tenant's actual cost after anchor exclusion; the "real" cost if anchors paid their share might be $6–$7/SF.

Restaurant: Location Premium Plus Operational Cost

Restaurant tenants in strip centers pay higher CAM than other retail tenants in the same property because restaurant operations are typically associated with higher outdoor maintenance costs: grease trap cleaning, dumpster enclosure maintenance, enhanced pest control, and parking lot wear from food delivery traffic. Some landlords attempt to allocate these restaurant-specific costs to the shared pool rather than to individual restaurant tenants — which is the overcharge pattern documented in restaurant-specific CAM disputes.

Industrial: Scale Masks the Exposure

Industrial CAM rates are the lowest in commercial real estate — but the large footprints of distribution and logistics tenants mean absolute dollar exposure is significant. A 50,000 SF tenant paying $1.50/SF owes $75,000 annually. A 3% pro-rata error (common when landlords substitute GLOA for GLA in vacancy calculations) costs $2,250/year. Over a 6-year lookback, that's $13,500.

How to Use These Benchmarks

The benchmarks identify anomalies, not overcharges. If your reconciliation comes in at $18/SF for a Class B suburban office building (national average: $7/SF), you should investigate — but the benchmark alone doesn't tell you which specific line items are wrong.

Step 1: Compare your total CAM per SF against the range for your property type and market.

Step 2: If above the range, break the reconciliation into categories: maintenance, utilities, management, insurance, taxes, and reserves. Identify which category is above-market.

Step 3: Pull three years of reconciliations to assess whether costs are growing above the rate of inflation or above any applicable CAM cap.

Step 4: Cross-reference each above-market category against your lease's exclusion list and pass-through definitions.

Step 5: If you identify a specific discrepancy, run a formal audit.

Run a free scan on your CAM charges — the automated analysis compares your specific lease provisions against every line item in your reconciliation.

What the Benchmarks Can't Tell You

Industry averages mask significant within-category variation. A Class A office tower in Chicago with $16/SF CAM may be billing legitimately; a Class B building in Phoenix with $13/SF may be overcharging. Location, building age, lease vintage, and operating standards all affect legitimate costs.

More importantly, benchmarks don't catch lease-specific overcharges. The most common overcharges — pro-rata share errors, management fee cap violations, base year gross-up failures — all produce bills that look normal in aggregate. A $9/SF retail CAM bill can contain $2/SF in overcharges that the benchmark comparison doesn't reveal.

IREM's Journal of Property Management reports that 30% of CAM statements contain errors. That error rate is distributed across the benchmark range — there's no evidence that above-benchmark properties have higher error rates than below-benchmark ones. The errors are lease-specific, not benchmark-detectable.

Frequently Asked Questions

How are CAM benchmarks calculated?

Industry benchmarks like BOMA's OER and ICSC's research data compile self-reported operating expense data from property owners and managers. They represent averages of actual billing data across hundreds or thousands of properties. They don't reflect what tenants should pay under their specific leases — only what tenants are actually paying on average.

My CAM is below the benchmark range. Does that mean I'm not being overcharged?

Not necessarily. Below-benchmark CAM can still contain overcharges if the total amount is lower than it should be but specific line items are incorrectly calculated. A management fee above your lease cap is an overcharge even if total CAM is low. A pro-rata denominator error is an overcharge even if the resulting bill is below average.

How much do CAM benchmarks vary by geographic market?

Substantially. Major CBD markets (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston) run $2–$4/SF above national averages for the same property class. Sun Belt suburban markets often run $1–$2/SF below. The BOMA OER breaks data down by market and class, which is the most accurate comparison for a specific property.

Should I include utilities in my CAM comparison?

If your lease includes utilities in CAM (some do, some don't), include them in the comparison. If your lease bills utilities separately from CAM, compare only the non-utility CAM portion against benchmarks that exclude utilities. Mixing utility and non-utility data can make a below-market building look above-market or vice versa.

CamAudit is a document analysis and automation tool. The analysis described on this page does not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney before sending any legal correspondence to your landlord.