This is what we would actually do, in what order, and what it costs.
No discovery call is required to see the number.
What we would go looking for
These are patterns that recur in real estate, written as things to
look for. They are not findings from a named engagement.
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.
The sequence
Five weeks for one operating unit. More units run in parallel rather than in
series, so a group does not take five times as long.
Week 1
Intake and reconciliation9 requests written for real estate, alongside the 107 covering the operating spine. We tell you which findings the gaps will limit before any fieldwork starts.
Weeks 2–3
Full pass, not a sampleEvery lease in scope is read rather than sampled.
Week 4
Quantification and challengeEach finding sized, and put to whoever owns it before it is written down.
Week 5
Report and walkthroughThe written report, ranked by annual value and by how hard each finding is to act on.
3 core requests written for real estate, inside the full intake.
Anything you do not have can be skipped with a reason — skipping narrows what the
review can conclude, and we tell you where before the work starts rather than after.
Rent roll — By unit, with lease start, end, break and escalation.
Occupancy and vacancy by property and month
Service charge and recoverable expenditure — Recoverable versus actually recovered. The gap is often nobody's job.
If any of this is already happening
The review is always worth doing and rarely urgent. It becomes urgent when
something else is happening — and if one of these is, the sequence above compresses
to fit it.
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 needs to be in the room
Signs it: Principal, asset manager or finance lead
Will resist it: Property managers whose recoveries and turn costs become comparable — worth telling them what the
review is for before they hear it from somewhere else.
Has been asking for it: Accounting, who reconcile CAM by hand every year
What it costs
Priced by operating unit — an entity, a location, or a business the accounts are
kept separately for. The second unit costs less than the first because by then the
intake is built, the chart of accounts is understood and the patterns are known.
Purchase order is the primary route — most
buyers this size raise a PO and pay against an invoice on terms. Card and bank
transfer exist for those who prefer them.