CAM Audit for Grocery / Supermarkets

CAM Cap Violation

Landlords apply the CAM cap to total CAM rather than only controllable expenses, or fail to apply it at renewal after a lease extension.

Detection: Compare year-over-year CAM increase to the cap rate in your lease. If controllable expenses increased more than the capped rate, calculate the overcharge amount for each year.

Loading Dock Maintenance in Shared CAM

Maintenance costs for loading docks, receiving areas, and truck courts are included in the shared CAM pool and allocated to all tenants based on pro-rata share.

Detection: Request the CAM ledger and identify any line items for loading dock, receiving area, truck court, or back-of-building maintenance. Verify whether your lease excludes these from shared CAM.

Management Fee on Excluded Costs

Management fees (typically 3–5% of gross CAM revenue) are charged on the full CAM pool including capital improvements, tenant improvement amortization, and anchor-excluded costs.

Detection: Identify the management fee base in the reconciliation. Calculate whether it includes any excluded expense categories. Rule 3 in CAMAudit detects this automatically.

Insurance Overcharge on Center-Wide Policy

Grocery stores increase the risk profile of the entire property due to 24/7 operations, refrigeration systems, and high delivery traffic. The resulting premium increment above market rate for the property type is a grocery-specific cost that should be direct-billed to the grocer, not allocated pro-rata to all tenants.

Detection: Request the actual insurance policy declarations page, not just the landlord invoice. Compare the premium per square foot to market benchmarks for similar non-grocery centers. The difference between the actual premium and the market rate represents the grocery-attributable overcharge.

Capital Improvement Amortization in Operating Pool

Parking lot reconstruction, refrigeration infrastructure upgrades, and structural improvements required to support grocery operations are capital expenditures with useful lives exceeding one year. When amortized into the annual operating CAM pool, tenants are charged for capital costs that should be excluded from year-over-year operating expenses.

Detection: Request the CAM general ledger and flag any amortization, depreciation, or capital recovery line items. Each item should be traced to an underlying capital project. If the project's useful life exceeds one year and your lease's exclusion schedule covers capital improvements, the amortization is an improper operating expense.