Insights
Notes on commercial lease administration.
Practical guides to CAM reconciliation, lease abstraction, percentage rent, and escalations, written for the people who run them.
Complete guide
Rent Escalations in Commercial Leases: Fixed, CPI, and the Traps
How commercial rent escalations work: fixed percent versus CPI, floors and caps, rounding rules, and why escalation terms outweigh the starting rate.
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Aug 28, 2026
Modeling Escalations Across a Rollover Schedule
Escalated rent, not the original rate, is what determines a renewal conversation. Why rollover analysis has to be built on current rent.
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Aug 18, 2026
Escalation Floors and Caps: Who They Actually Protect
Floors and caps turn a CPI clause into a band. What each is worth, and why a narrow band is all cost and no benefit.
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Aug 10, 2026
Reading the CPI Series Correctly
Which index, which periods, and what happens on rebasing: the four questions a CPI escalation clause must answer.
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Jul 30, 2026
Fixed vs. CPI Escalations: Which Actually Costs More
Fixed-percent escalations are predictable; CPI clauses are usually bounded into a narrow band. What the choice actually does over a ten-year term.
Complete guide
Percentage Rent Explained: Breakpoints, Sales, and True-Ups
How percentage rent works in retail leases: natural and artificial breakpoints, what counts as gross sales, and how the annual true-up is calculated.
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Aug 26, 2026
Audit Rights on Reported Sales
What a percentage rent audit clause should say, when exercising it is warranted, and what the threshold provision actually does.
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Aug 8, 2026
Percentage Rent True-Up Math
How the annual true-up is calculated, how monthly billing complicates it, and the partial-year cases that trip people up.
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Jul 24, 2026
Collecting Tenant Sales Reports (The Actual Hard Part)
Percentage rent depends on data you cannot observe. What the lease should require, and how to make reporting routine rather than occasional.
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Jul 10, 2026
Natural vs. Artificial Breakpoints, With Worked Math
How to derive a natural breakpoint, when an artificial one is used instead, and what each does to the economics of a retail lease.
Complete guide
Commercial Lease Abstraction: Process, Cost, and Automation
What belongs in a commercial lease abstract, what abstraction actually costs, and how to keep abstracts accurate through four amendments.
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Aug 22, 2026
Abstracting an Inherited Portfolio: Where to Start
Taking over a portfolio with no usable lease abstracts, with a triage order that protects you from the expensive failures first.
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Aug 14, 2026
Amendment Tracking Without Losing Lease History
Why editing an abstract in place breaks historical reconciliations, and how versioning solves it.
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Aug 6, 2026
Tracking Critical Dates Without Losing Them to Staff Turnover
Which lease dates carry real financial consequence, why calendar reminders fail, and what a durable tracking system needs.
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Jul 16, 2026
What Commercial Lease Abstraction Actually Costs
The real cost of abstracting a lease portfolio: in-house hours, outsourced pricing, and the recurring cost nobody budgets for.
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Jun 28, 2026
What Belongs in a Commercial Lease Abstract
A field-by-field template for commercial lease abstracts, and why structured data beats a prose summary every time.
Complete guide
CAM Reconciliation: The Complete Guide for Commercial Landlords
How CAM reconciliation works, in the order it must be done: pool actuals, exclusions, gross-up, admin fee, tenant share, base year, cap, and true-up.
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Aug 12, 2026
Writing a CAM Reconciliation Letter Tenants Do Not Dispute
What to include in a reconciliation statement so the tenant can verify it themselves. And why detail reduces disputes rather than inviting them.
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Aug 4, 2026
The CAM Reconciliation Timeline (And the Deadline That Can Cost You the Year)
A month-by-month reconciliation schedule, and the lease provision that bars billing a reconciliation delivered late.
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Jul 28, 2026
Surviving a Tenant CAM Audit
What a tenant auditor asks for, the findings that come up most often, and how to prepare before the request arrives.
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Jul 14, 2026
CAM Estimates and True-Ups: Getting the Cash Flow Right
How to set monthly CAM estimates that neither strain tenant cash flow nor leave you funding operating expenses, and how the true-up nets against them.
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Jul 6, 2026
Calculating Pro-Rata Share (And Why the Denominator Matters)
The three ways leases express a tenant share of expenses, and why the building denominator is the number most worth pinning down.
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Jul 2, 2026
Standard CAM Exclusions: What Tenants Should Not Pay For
The exclusions that belong in every commercial lease, why itemizing them matters at audit, and the categories most often disputed.
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Jun 26, 2026
CAM Caps: Cumulative, Non-Cumulative, and Compounding
The three variables that define a CAM cap, why cumulative caps favor landlords over long terms, and the ordering error that defeats the cap entirely.
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Jun 18, 2026
Gross-Up Explained, With the Math
Why a half-empty building still bills CAM like a full one, which costs get grossed up, and the two errors that make the calculation wrong.
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Jun 12, 2026
Base Year vs. Expense Stop: Which Protects You Better
Both limit a tenant exposure to operating expenses, but they set the reference differently. And the difference decides who carries the risk.
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