Contracted is not the same as collected.

“The rent roll says one number and the bank statement says another.”

A rent roll states what should arrive. What arrives depends on whether escalations were applied, whether recoverable expenditure was recovered, and whether anyone chased the arrears. Each is somebody's job in principle and frequently nobody's in practice.

rent roll
vacancy
CAM recovery
escalation
recovery ratio
restoration obligations
cap rate
opex reconciliation

Your words, not ours.

Where it concentrates here

Five places the money tends to go in real estate. Each one is concentrated — a single agreement, a single queue, a single account nobody reviews — which is why sampling walks straight past them.

Lease escalations not applied on the review date, then not applied the following year either, compounding quietly for the rest of the term.
Recoverable CAM and operating expense incurred and never billed back, because the reconciliation ran late and the window in the lease to bill it closed.
Vacant suites still absorbing full CAM with no vacancy allowance recognized, so the recovery ratio flatters the asset.
Life-safety and compliance certifications — fire, elevator, electrical, asbestos — lapsed across part of a portfolio, found at the worst possible moment.
Management agreements with fee bases that no longer match the service actually being delivered.

Not every real estate is the same business

Commercial office and retailCAM and operating expense recoveries computed once a year against leases whose recovery clauses are not identical.
MultifamilyConcessions, turnover cost and ancillary income where the true cost of a turn is rarely assembled per unit.
Industrial and flexTriple-net structures where the obligation to reimburse is clear and the process for billing it is informal.
Third-party property managementManagement fees on a percentage that assumed a scope, against services that expanded without the percentage changing.
Mixed-use and ground leaseEscalations, resets and index-linked rents that must be actioned on a date nobody is monitoring.

Where this data actually lives

Yardi Voyager, MRI or RealPage in larger portfolios; AppFolio or Entrata below that
A CAM reconciliation workbook that is the real basis of recoveries
Building systems and utility accounts often not mapped to the entity that pays them
A lease abstract set that is complete for recent leases and patchy for inherited ones

Named because it changes what the intake asks for. An extract from one of these has known gaps, and the review is built around them rather than surprised by them.

Reported in your numbers, not ours

NOI
recovery ratio
economic occupancy
turn cost per unit
concession burden
operating expense per square foot
arrears aging
management fee capture

The obligations that set the deadlines

Property tax assessments and appeal deadlines, which cannot be extended
Insurance schedules and certificates from tenants and contractors
Lender reporting: rent rolls, operating statements, covenant certificates
Local compliance — energy benchmarking, inspections, registrations
Sales and use tax on services in jurisdictions that apply it

What the review would ask you for

9 requests written for real estate and asked of nobody else — 3 of them core. They sit alongside the operating spine every business has — finance, revenue, receivables, payables, contracts, people, IT, operations, risk, commercial and governance — which is 107 further requests.

Rent roll Core By unit, with lease start, end, break and escalation.
Occupancy and vacancy by property and month Core
Arrears and collection Aged by tenant, with the escalation process.
Service charge and recoverable expenditure Core Recoverable versus actually recovered. The gap is often nobody's job.
Operating expenditure by property Utilities, maintenance, security, cleaning.
Capital projects and refurbishment Budget, spend and completion.
Property and facilities management contracts Scope, fee basis and KPIs.
Valuations and yield assumptions Most recent, with the basis.
Statutory compliance by property Fire, lifts, asbestos, electrical, and whether certification is current.

Anything you do not have can be skipped in one click, with a reason. The intake is completed in the client portal, which saves each answer as it is given and can be returned to as often as you like.

When this stops being interesting and becomes urgent

A refinancing, where the rent roll and the lease files are read closely
A CAM true-up disputed by a tenant
An acquisition of a portfolio whose recoveries were run differently
A property manager change
An insurance renewal after a market-wide rate move

Who this involves

Signs it: Principal, asset manager or finance lead
Resists it: Property managers whose recoveries and turn costs become comparable
Has been asking for it: Accounting, who reconcile CAM by hand every year

Who commissions it

Asset managers, portfolio directors and finance leads. Phase one is priced before phase two is discussed, the report is yours either way, and we take no vendor commissions or referral fees on anything we recommend.

See the proposal and the price Talk it through first

The proposal sets out the sequence week by week, what we would need from you, and what it costs for your number of operating units. No call required to see the number.

Closest to this

Operations that share more with real estate than the sector label suggests.