TIL my triple net lease had a clause I completely missed for 2 years

I was looking over my lease renewal paperwork for a small retail space in Akron last week. Get to the bottom and there's this paragraph about 'common area maintenance caps' that I apparently signed off on in 2021. Turns out I've been paying 12% over the actual costs every quarter. My landlord's property manager mentioned it in passing like it was no big deal. Has anyone else found hidden stuff in their lease language years later?

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tylermason2mo ago

Read a thing from some real estate lawyer on LinkedIn a while back about triple net leases hiding CAM caps in the fine print. Said it's super common for landlords to sneak in stuff like "limited annual increases" that actually let them charge way more than the real costs. Twelve percent over quarterly is brutal though, that adds up to a lot of cash over two years. I'd push back hard on renewal and ask for a full audit of every single quarter you've paid.

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grayw322mo ago

Oh man @tylermason you nailed it. I got burned the same way on a warehouse lease last year. Landlord had this "3% annual cap" that they totally bypassed by reclassifying basic maintenance as "capital improvements" every quarter. Ended up paying like 15% more than actual costs over 18 months. Totally agree on the audit thing. I hired a commercial lease auditor and they found $4k in straight up billing errors. The LL fought it hard but once we threatened to walk they caved. Pushing for that full breakdown of all the quarterly charges is the right move.

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