CREagentic is an AI-powered platform for commercial real estate built around The Analyst — a conversational AI employee that handles deal underwriting end-to-end: valuation, BOVs, waterfalls, dispositions, IC memos. You can also access individual analysis tools directly — rent roll parsing, T-12 parsing, environmental report analysis, and more — as power-user deep-links from the dashboard.

How does CREagentic compare to leading analysis software?

CREagentic provides transparent DCF valuation plus The Analyst — chat-driven rather than menu-driven. Individual analysis tools (lease abstraction, LOI redlining, CAM reconciliation, rent roll parsing, T-12 parsing, and more) are accessible directly or through The Analyst's workspace. CREagentic starts free with no implementation fees.

Property managers, asset managers, CRE brokers, accountants, and acquisition teams at REITs, private equity firms, and property management companies use CREagentic.

Yes. The free demo includes 10 one-time AI credits with no credit card required. Paid plans include monthly AI credits; complex documents use more credits. Advanced features like PDF/Excel exports and scenario analysis require a paid plan.

What is AI lease abstraction?

AI lease abstraction uses artificial intelligence to extract structured data from commercial lease documents in a fraction of the time manual review takes. CREagentic extracts 200+ fields including rent schedules, CAM provisions, options, and critical dates.

What is CAM reconciliation?

CAM reconciliation is the annual process of comparing actual common area maintenance expenses to the monthly estimates collected from tenants, resulting in either an additional charge or a credit for each tenant.

Understanding NNN Leases: Calculating Tenant Expenses in Commercial Real Estate

What a triple net lease is

Under a triple net lease the tenant pays base rent plus its share of three property expense categories: real estate taxes, property insurance, and common area maintenance. The landlord collects those amounts alongside rent, pays the actual bills, and reconciles the estimates against actuals at year end. NNN is the standard structure for retail strip centers, single-tenant industrial buildings, and many suburban office properties.

A gross lease is the opposite. The landlord absorbs operating expenses and charges a higher base rent to cover them, which is common in multi-tenant office towers in major markets. A modified gross lease sits between: the tenant pays base rent plus some categories but not others, or pays increases above a base year. Knowing which structure you are looking at is the first step in comparing two proposals.

The three nets

Real estate taxes. Usually the largest component. Each tenant pays a share of the county's annual bill. In a typical retail center taxes run $3 to $8 per square foot depending on the jurisdiction. Taxes can spike after a sale, because many counties reassess at the transaction price, and the increase flows straight to tenants. Some leases let tenants participate in appeals. Most reserve that right to the landlord.

Insurance. The landlord's property and liability policies for the building and common areas, typically $0.50 to $2.00 per square foot, and much more in hurricane, flood or earthquake zones. The tenant's own business insurance is separate and is the tenant's direct obligation under the lease.

Common area maintenance. The most variable component and the source of most disputes. Parking lot repair, landscaping, snow removal, exterior lighting, signage, common restrooms, security, trash, common area utilities, and management fees. CAM ranges from $3 to $12 per square foot depending on the property type, its age, the climate and the service level. Management fees of 3% to 6% of gross revenue often sit inside CAM and add another $1 to $3 per square foot.

How the pro rata share works

The formula is the tenant's leased square footage divided by the property's total leasable square footage. A tenant with 3,000 square feet in a 60,000 square foot center has a 5% share, so on $300,000 of property taxes it owes $15,000, or $5 per square foot.

The denominator is where tenants get hurt. Total leasable area and total building area are different numbers. Mechanical rooms and management offices are not leasable. A smaller denominator raises everyone's share. Verify that the lease's denominator matches the actual leasable area of the property.

Gross-up provisions handle vacancy. If a center is 80% leased, only 80% of the variable expenses get recovered from tenants. A gross-up clause lets the landlord calculate variable expenses as if the property were 95% or 100% occupied, spreading the full cost across the tenants who are there. Without a gross-up the landlord absorbs the vacant share, which is fair, since the landlord controls leasing. Tenants should cap the gross-up at 95%.

Anchors negotiate their own formulas. A grocery store with 45,000 square feet in a 120,000 square foot center may have a fixed CAM contribution or a cap, and exclusions for costs that mostly benefit the small tenants. The remaining tenants' effective share ends up higher than their square footage suggests.

Caps and stops

A CAM cap limits year-over-year increases, usually to 3% to 5%. Whether it is cumulative or non-cumulative changes the result dramatically.

Take a tenant with year one CAM of $6.00 per square foot and a 5% cap. Under a non-cumulative cap, each year's maximum is 5% over the prior year's actual CAM. If actual CAM stays flat at $6.00 for three years and jumps to $8.00 in year four, the tenant pays $6.30. If actual drops to $6.50 in year five, the tenant pays $6.50. The cap resets against actuals every year.

Under a cumulative cap the maximum compounds from the year one base: $6.30 in year two, $6.615 in year three, $6.946 in year four, $7.293 in year five. Even if actual CAM spikes to $9.00 in year four, the tenant pays $6.946. Over a volatile five years a cumulative cap can save a tenant 15% to 25%. Tenants push for cumulative. Landlords push for non-cumulative.

An expense stop works differently. It sets a baseline, typically year one actual expenses, and the tenant pays only increases above it. With a $6.00 stop and year three actuals of $7.00, the tenant pays $1.00 per square foot in additional rent. Stops are more common in gross and modified gross structures, but the mechanism matters when comparing proposals.

Controllable versus uncontrollable

Some leases split expenses into two buckets. Controllable costs are the ones the landlord can influence: management, landscaping, janitorial, security, maintenance. Uncontrollable costs are driven from outside: taxes, insurance, utilities, snow. A CAM cap usually applies only to the controllable bucket, and the rest passes through at cost without limit.

A tenant who negotiated a 4% cap may find it covers $4 per square foot of controllable expense while $4 per square foot of taxes and insurance can rise without limit. A reassessment after a sale can add $2 to $3 per square foot in a single year with no protection. Model the worst case on the uncontrollable bucket, not the average.

Calculation errors to avoid

Forgetting to gross up. Underwriting a property at 90% occupancy using actual collected expenses understates the per-tenant cost at stabilization.

Applying the cap to everything. Caps almost never cover taxes and insurance. Applying one to total NNN charges understates the tenant's exposure.

Getting capital expenditures wrong. Many leases exclude capex outright. Many others include it amortized over useful life with interest, which can add $0.50 to $1.50 per square foot a year for a roof, a parking lot or an HVAC replacement. Read which one you have.

Double counting the management fee. If management is already a CAM line item, do not add a separate percentage on top. Some leases define the admin fee as a percentage of total CAM including the management fee itself, which creates a circular calculation.

Tools

Excel handles a simple case. It stops being reliable with multiple tenants, mixed cap structures and gross-ups. Our free NNN lease calculator computes total occupancy cost from base rent plus each component, and the CAM estimate calculator models pro rata shares with gross-up and caps. For full portfolio modeling with recoveries inside a DCF, the valuation engine supports all six standard recovery methods, including the cumulative versus non-cumulative distinction that trips up experienced analysts.