Picture a regional asset manager who remeasures a 12 story office tower after re tenanting a floor. The architect returns a new set of rentable numbers built to the BOMA 2024 Office Standard. On paper, nothing dramatic happened. A load factor moved. A few previously uncounted areas came into the calculation. The building's total rentable area ticked up by a small percentage.
Then the year end reconciliation ran. Two tenants questioned their new pro rata shares. One escalation clause, pegged to a base year expense stop, no longer reconciled against the same denominator it had used for six years. The manager spent the next three weeks explaining to tenants why a measurement standard they had never heard of had changed their operating expense bill.
Here is the question that scenario forces. When the way you measure a building changes, what happens to every dollar you allocate across it?
The short answer: BOMA 2024 does not change what a building costs to operate. It changes how much of that cost each tenant carries, because it changes rentable area, and rentable area is the denominator underneath every CAM reconciliation and most expense escalations. Remeasure the building and you have quietly recut the pie without touching the pie itself.
What the BOMA 2024 Office Standard Is For?
The office measurement standard is called ANSI/BOMA Z65.1. The latest version, published in 2024, is known as BOMA 2024 for Office Buildings: Standard Methods of Measurement. It updates the earlier ANSI/BOMA Z65.1-1996 standard.
The main purpose of this standard is to calculate a building's rentable area, which is the basis for office leasing. BOMA also explains that the same measurements are used to divide building operating costs between different cost centers. In simple terms, the same standard used to determine how much space can be rented is also used to decide how operating expenses are shared.
The standard is designed only for office buildings and related structures. It can be used for both new and existing buildings, whether they have one tenant or many. As of March 2024, BOMA has six different measurement standards. The correct standard depends on the building's design and how it is used. If at least half of a property is used for one purpose, the matching single use standard is applied. Buildings with typical office layouts use the office standard.
Rentable area is the starting point for calculating leases. However, the teams that measure rentable area and the teams that prepare invoices often use different systems. Because of this, changes to rentable area do not always appear automatically on tenant bills.
Rentable area is where the leasing math starts. The trouble is that the people who calculate it and the people who bill against it rarely work in the same system, so a change in the number does not automatically reach the invoice.
How Do BOMA 2024 Rentable Area Changes Flow Into CAM Pools?
CAM reconciliation runs on a fraction. The numerator is the pool of recoverable expenses. The denominator is total rentable area. Each tenant pays a pro rata share equal to their rentable square footage divided by that total.
Change the measurement standard and both sides of the fraction can move. If BOMA 2024 pulls previously uncounted area into the rentable total, the building's denominator grows. A tenant whose own footprint did not change now represents a smaller slice of a larger whole. Their percentage drops. So does their allocated recovery, unless the newly counted area is also occupied and paying its own share.
The trap is mismatched vintages. A landlord who remeasures the building to BOMA 2024 but leaves existing leases stated in prior standard square footage now holds two sources of truth. Suppose one lease says the tenant occupies 24,000 rentable square feet while a fresh measurement returns 23,100. Reconcile CAM against the wrong number and the recovery comes out wrong, in the tenant's favor or the landlord's, and it surfaces in the next audit.
The Escalation Billing Implications Owners Are Missing
Expense escalations are where the measurement change gets expensive and stays quiet. Many office leases escalate operating expenses off a base year or an expense stop, then bill the tenant a pro rata share of anything above it. That share is a rentable area percentage. Move the percentage and you move every future escalation invoice, not just one reconciliation.
Base years and measurement bases must match. For example, suppose a building's base year expense stop was established when it had 480,000 rentable square feet. If a BOMA 2024 remeasurement later increases the rentable area to 495,000 square feet, the tenant's share of operating expense escalations is now calculated using a different measurement basis than the one used when the lease was signed. The comparison is no longer consistent, and the difference can compound over the life of a long term lease.
This is the aspect that most BOMA related articles do not cover. Resources from Gensler, Building Engines, and other measurement focused guides explain how rentable area and load factors are calculated, but they typically stop there. They rarely discuss what happens when a revised rentable area is introduced into a lease with operating expense escalations over many years. That is where building owners and tenants can experience real financial impacts, and it remains a largely undocumented topic.
Which BOMA Standard and Edition Governs Your Lease?
Rentable area is not produced in a vacuum. The standard that applies to a building is set by its type, and the office standard is the right tool only for a building with typical office features. A property that is majority retail or industrial uses its matching single use standard, and a building with no clear primary use falls to the mixed use standard.
The office standard also recognizes something most owners overlook. A governing document, such as a lease or a cost sharing agreement, can direct how floor area is measured. That means the measurement controlling a tenant's bill is only as settled as the language in the lease.
The governing document is the real authority. If a building's leases do not name which BOMA standard and edition apply, the rentable figure is open to interpretation. Remeasure under BOMA 2024 and a tenant can reasonably read that ambiguity in whichever direction favors them. Portfolios with silent leases, or a mix of measurement vintages across buildings, carry the most exposure.
Why This Keeps Happening?
Measurement and billing live in different departments, and often in different software. Architects and measurement vendors produce the area calculations. Property accountants run CAM and escalations. Lease administrators hold the abstracted terms. The BOMA edition and method sit in the lease, the rentable figure sits in the rent roll, and the reconciliation runs off the accounting system. Three records, rarely checked against each other.
So a building gets remeasured for a refinance or a sale, and the new numbers enter the rent roll without anyone tracing them back through every active lease's escalation and recovery language. The gap is structural, not careless. It surfaces years later, usually in an audit or a tenant dispute, long after the person who ordered the remeasurement has moved on.
What Teams Can Do Differently?
Tie every rentable figure to its standard and edition. A rentable square footage number means little without the standard and edition that produced it. Record the BOMA edition and the measurement date next to the number itself, in both the lease abstract and the rent roll, so the denominator is never ambiguous.
Reconcile the records before you remeasure, not after. Before new area numbers touch the rent roll, pull the escalation and recovery language from every affected lease and confirm which standard each one references. A remeasurement that ignores the lease terms underneath it manufactures disputes instead of clarity.
Keep the measurement basis with the money. The rentable figure and the standard it was measured under should travel with the leases that rely on them, not sit in a separate file. This is the kind of measurement to billing complexity that QTREN is built to understand: the point where a rentable area figure stops being a measurement detail and starts driving what every tenant pays.
The Broader Lesson
BOMA 2024 will spread the way every prior edition did, one refinance and one sale at a time, until it is simply how buildings are measured. The owners who get hurt will not be the ones who adopted it early. They will be the ones who let the new numbers into the rent roll without checking what those numbers were quietly rewriting underneath. So one question is worth asking before your next remeasurement. If someone remeasured your largest asset to BOMA 2024 tomorrow, could you trace every escalation and CAM share in the building back to the standard that governs it?
Frequently Asked Questions
Does BOMA 2024 change how much a building costs to operate?
No. It changes how operating costs are allocated, not the costs themselves. Because it governs rentable area, and rentable area sets each tenant's pro rata share, it can change who pays what even when total building expenses hold steady.
Can a lease override the BOMA measurement standard?
Yes. The office standard recognizes that a governing document, such as a lease or a cost sharing agreement, can direct how floor area is measured. So the measurement that controls a tenant's bill is ultimately the one the lease specifies.
Which BOMA standard applies to my building?
It depends on the building's architecture and occupancy. As of March 2024, BOMA maintains six measurement standards. A building that is at least half a single use generally takes the matching single use standard. A typical office building takes the Office Standard, and one with no clear primary use takes the Mixed Use Standard.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or compliance advice. Real estate professionals should consult qualified counsel and a certified measurement professional regarding BOMA 2024 adoption, lease measurement provisions, and jurisdiction specific requirements.