California Attorney and Real Estate Broker Chris Adishian answers the question, “How can I tell if I am being overcharged for CAMS?” at the South Bay Association of Realtors’ event, “Commercial Attorney Panel-Hot Legal Issues for Commercial Real Estate” on March 5, 2014.
Transcript:
Question: “So how do I know I wasn’t overcharged for the CAM?”
Answer: “This is a question that comes up all the time. In your standard commercial lease, there’s usually a provision that the Landlord, either on his own has reporting duty or at the request of the tenant, is required to provide a reasonable accounting of the CAMS: what was actually paid by the tenant versus what was actually incurred by the Landlord.
And then there’s usually an adjustment, either a credit back to the tenant or actually sometimes a surcharge because the Landlord was undercharging versus what actually happened during the year. To be safe, as a tenant, at the end of every year, you want to ask the Landlord to provide that reconciliation to you.
And usually it takes the Landlord a couple months after the year end to do that when he’s closing his books and finalizing the numbers. But that should be a reasonable request and any Landlord that doesn’t respond to that request, you should be somewhat suspect of that. But it is the tenant’s responsibility, usually, to request it; Landlords won’t necessarily always provide it to you.”
About Adishian Law Group, P.C.
Adishian Law Group is a California law firm with a statewide practice in the areas of Corporate law, Employment law, Real Estate law and Mediation Services. Adishianlaw.com is one of the oldest continually operating law firm websites on the Internet. The firm serves its clientele via three offices located in the major business hubs of El Segundo, Palo Alto and San Francisco. As of March 2013, Adishian Law Group, P.C. has represented individual and corporate clients located across 20 California counties, 4 States outside of California and 9 foreign countries — in over 340 legal matters.
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