EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Commercial office leases frequently under-deliver on promised tenant improvement (TI) allowances and miscalculate operating expense baselines, costing corporate tenants tens of thousands in hidden capital outlay. Professional lease reviews protect cash flow.
Tenant improvement allowances are negotiated dollars a landlord agrees to contribute toward fitting out your space. Yet the gap between the number on the lease page and the cash that arrives is often wide. Disbursal delays are common because landlords hold TI funds behind documentation, approval, and reimbursement conditions that are rarely spelled out clearly at signing.
The most frequent cause is the difference between an allowance and a reimbursement schedule. Unless the lease states exactly which costs are reimbursable, when invoices must be submitted, and how many days the landlord has to pay, disbursal is governed by discretion rather than contract. Corporate tenants then end up carrying capital costs the allowance was meant to fund.
Collecting every concession you negotiated requires a disciplined, line-by-line protocol rather than a trusting review of the lease abstract. The goal is to verify both that the allowance exists and that the operating expense baseline was set correctly — because a miscalculated baseline silently erodes concession value year after year.
Trace each allowance dollar to eligible build-out costs and confirm reimbursements match the negotiated allowance limit and schedule.
Confirm the base year is correctly identified and that escalation is calculated against the right starting figure, not a restated baseline that raises every subsequent invoice.
Check every concession against the executed lease and its addenda, not the broker's summary, to catch items that never made it into the final contract.
Document due dates, follow up on undisbursed funds, and exercise audit and cure rights so unpaid concessions do not quietly lapse.
A structured office lease audit verifies TI allowance disbursal, flags miscalculated operating expense baselines, and ensures every negotiated concession is actually collected. The first step is a confidential advisory conversation.