CAM Charges in a Commercial Lease, and What a Manhattan Lease Calls Them
CAM charges in a commercial lease are common area maintenance charges: what a tenant pays, on top of rent, toward cleaning, lighting, securing and repairing the parts of a property all tenants share. A tenant arriving from another market will rarely see the term on a Manhattan office lease, where those costs sit inside the building's operating expenses. The asking rent covers them at the level of a base year, and the tenant pays its pro-rata share of any increase above that level. So in New York the question is not what CAM costs but which year is the base year and what counts as an expense.
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Send me floors in this rangeUpdated 2026-10-03 · Nomad Group
What CAM covers in the market you are coming from
In shopping centers and suburban office parks, CAM is a line on the monthly bill. It usually takes in cleaning, lighting, security, landscaping and the upkeep of shared space. The landlord estimates the year's cost, bills each tenant a share every month in addition to a net rent, and settles the difference once the year has closed.
The Manhattan translation: operating expenses above a base year
A Manhattan office rent is normally quoted gross. The building's running costs are already inside it, at the level of the base year, which is usually the first calendar year of the term. From the second year on, if the building's costs have risen past the base-year total, you pay a share of the rise as additional rent.
A lease can carry up to three such lines.
- An operating expense escalation, for the building's running costs.
- A real estate tax escalation, measured against a base tax year of its own.
- In some older buildings, a porter's wage formula: rent rises with the hourly wage for building porters, in place of an expense pass-through.
Smaller loft buildings often skip all of this and charge a fixed percentage increase each year. Operating expenses covers each version in full.
The pro-rata share, worked once
Your share is a fraction: the floor's rentable area over the rentable area of the whole building. The lease states both figures.
For example, suppose a floor of 6,000 rentable square feet in a building of 150,000. The share is 4 percent. If the building's operating costs in a later year run $250,000 above the base year, the floor owes 4 percent of that: $10,000 for the year, or about $1.67 per square foot. Taxes are worked out the same way, against their own base.
Whether the asking rent already includes these costs
Partly. An asking rent in Manhattan includes operating costs and taxes as they stand in the base year. It does not include the growth above that year, and it does not include electricity, which is billed separately. Two floors with one asking rent can therefore cost different amounts over five years, depending on the base year and on how each lease defines an expense.
The block below shows floors on our book asking $50 to $75 a square foot a year, before electricity and before escalations. Ask of each one which escalation structure sits behind the rent.
CAM under each lease type, in two sentences
Under a net or triple net lease, CAM is charged in addition to a lower base rent, as the tenant's share of the whole cost. Under a gross lease it sits inside the rent, and in the modified gross form Manhattan offices use, the tenant pays only its share of the growth above the base year. Gross and net leases compares the structures.
The year-end reconciliation, caps, exclusions and the right to audit are all negotiated before signing, and your attorney should confirm how the lease words each of them.
Floors asking $50 to $75 per square foot
Live from our listings · 6 of the 20, cheapest first20 of the 46 floors with a published rent ask $50 to $75 per square foot per year, from 2,500 to 27,344 square feet.
- Floors
- 20
- Sizes
- 2,500-27,344 sq ft
- Asking rent
- $50-$72 / sq ft
- 127 West 26th Street, Entire 7th Floor 9,500 sq ft $50/sq ft Chelsea about 54 people
- 115 West 30th Street, Partial 4th Floor 3,500 sq ft $55/sq ft Chelsea about 20 people
- 29 West 17th Street, Partial 7th Floor 2,500 sq ft $60/sq ft Union Square about 14 people
- 1235 Broadway, Entire 4th Floor 9,500 sq ft $62/sq ft NoMad about 54 people
- 32 Old Slip, Partial 32nd Floor 6,997 sq ft $64/sq ft FiDi about 40 people
- 54 West 21st Street, Partial 4th Floor 3,960 sq ft $72/sq ft Flatiron about 23 people
The full guide
This page is the short answer. The long one, with the numbers worked through, is here:
Related topics
- CAM Charges and the Year-End Reconciliation: What to Negotiate Before the Bill Arrives
- Class A, B and C Office Space Meaning: What the Letters Tell You, and What They Do Not
- Luxury Office Space in Manhattan: Is a Trophy Floor Worth It After a Raise?
- Rentable vs Usable Square Footage: What to Ask Before Comparing Two Floors
Will a Manhattan landlord quote CAM if we ask for it?
Rarely. The term belongs to retail and suburban office leases. Ask instead for the escalation structure: the base year, which costs pass through, whether taxes are a separate line, and how electricity is billed.
What does the base year do to our bill?
It sets the level the landlord absorbs. In that year you owe no escalation on operating costs; from the next year on, your fraction of whatever the building spends beyond that level lands on your bill. If the base year covers only a few months, or a year when the building was under-serviced, ordinary costs later show up as increases. Escalations explains where to set it.
Is CAM the same as a triple net charge?
CAM is one part of it. A triple net lease passes through three things beyond base rent: real estate taxes, building insurance and maintenance. CAM is the maintenance piece. The triple net entry shows how to set such a quote beside a Manhattan gross rent.
How do we compare a net rent from another city with a Manhattan asking rent?
Add the pass-throughs back first. A net rent leaves taxes, insurance and maintenance outside the number, where a Manhattan asking rent includes them at base-year levels. Put both on total occupancy cost per square foot over the term before deciding which is cheaper.
Talk to a broker
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Tell us three things: team size, timing, budget. A first shortlist can be ready within 24 hours, with the asking rent on every floor that publishes one.
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