Common Area Maintenance (CAM)

Common Area Maintenance (CAM)- an additional tenant payment made on top of the normal base rent to help offset the expenses incurred for some common, recurring maintenance items.

• Specific items included may vary from lease to lease

• Generally established under the lease section entitled "Parking Lot Maintenance"

• May include lighting, cleaning, security, snow removal, striping, patching, and repairs

There are two different methodologies for determining payment amounts:

Type 1 - Sole Reimbursement

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• Regardless of how much money is spent by the Landlord on maintaining the listed CAM items, the tenant will only pay the exact amounts established by the Lease Agreement.

• Lease language should include the following: “Lessee agrees to pay Lessor, as Lessee's sole reimbursement to Lessor for its actual cost of care and maintenance on the parking lot”

• You will not be able to recover any of these expenses beyond what the Lease allows.

• This also means you do not need to submit anything to the tenant at the beginning of each year, like you would with a reconciliation property.

Type 2 - Reconciliation

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• Requires a bit more groundwork, but has the benefit of potentially enabling the Landlord to recover more of their expenses each year.

• Requires the Landlord to submit an accounting of the total amounts spent on their recoverable expenses each year. The total amount spent on these recoverable expenses will then need to be compared against the annual CAM payments the tenant has already made.

• If the landlord has spent more than the tenant has paid, the tenant is then required to reimburse the landlord for the difference.

• However, if the tenant has paid more than the landlord spent, the landlord will then be required to reimburse the tenant for the difference.  

Accounting for Reconciliation

Most reconciliation leases will require the Landlord to submit the accounting of their recoverable expenses within 60 days of the beginning of the year, or by March 1st. To do this, the landlord must send the following: 

1. An invoice clearly showing the amounts owed by the Tenant or the Landlord 

2. Copies of all invoices from vendors that completed work on CAM areas  

3. Copies of all payments made to vendors, showing invoices were paid

   Once those items are together, it can be submitted to ralease@dollargeneral.com.