What's different about a retail rent roll compared to office or multifamily?

Retail rolls carry CAM/tax/insurance pro-rata recovery, percentage rent breakpoints, and co-tenancy or exclusive-use flags tied to specific tenants, none of which appear on a standard office or multifamily roll. Reading the roll correctly requires cross-referencing each of these against the underlying leases and sales reports.

How do you verify percentage rent on a retail deal?

Pull 12-24 months of tenant sales reports (audited, not broker estimates) and compare against each lease's stated breakpoint. Flag any tenant within 5% of a breakpoint who isn't paying overage rent, that's either an uncollected receivable or a signal the sales figures on file are stale.

What is a co-tenancy clause and why does it matter in diligence?

A co-tenancy clause lets an inline tenant reduce rent or terminate if a specified anchor (or occupancy threshold) isn't maintained. In diligence, map every active co-tenancy clause against the anchor's remaining lease term and renewal probability, an anchor vacancy can cascade into reduced rent across a large share of the rent roll simultaneously.

How do you analyze a rent roll?

Compare every row to the executed lease, tie totals to the GL, compute loss-to-lease, build the expiration schedule, and audit delinquencies. The automated version is a rent roll audit tool.

Retail · Rent Roll Analysis

Retail Rent Roll Analysis

How to read a retail rent roll: CAM recovery columns, percentage rent breakpoints, co-tenancy flags, and anchor/inline traps. Free template.

Get the Excel template Automate it with Moraine

Why the rent roll analysis looks different for retail

A retail rent roll carries columns a multifamily or office roll doesn't: CAM/tax/insurance pro-rata share, percentage rent breakpoints, and co-tenancy or exclusive-use flags tied to specific tenants. Reading it correctly means understanding which charges are recovered, which are capped, and which tenants have contractual rights that change if a neighbor leaves.

Reconciliation runs three ways instead of one: the roll against the leases (to confirm recovery percentages and breakpoints), the roll against the CAM reconciliation billed to tenants (to confirm recovery actually happened, not just contractually exists), and percentage rent against tenant sales reports (to confirm overage rent is being captured, not waived).

Co-tenancy clauses can convert a full-price lease into a reduced-rent or termination right the moment an anchor vacates, a risk invisible on the roll unless you cross-reference the anchor's lease status, while CAM caps and exclusions quietly erode recovery as controllable costs outgrow the cap.

The retail-specific checklist

1

Tie rent roll to leases

Verify: every tenant has an executed lease on file
2

Reconcile to GL

Verify: three months of collections match rent roll totals within 1%
3

Compute loss-to-lease

Verify: effective vs. scheduled rent; flag >8%
4

Build expiration schedule

Verify: year-by-year; flag any single year >30% of NOI
5

Check delinquencies

Verify: 30+, 60+, 90+ buckets; flag >2% of GSR
6

Pull CAM/tax/insurance pro-rata share by tenant and sum to 100%

Verify: total allocated share reconciles to leased GLA, not just headcount of tenants
7

Compare each tenant's CAM recovery cap/exclusion language to the roll's stated recovery rate

Verify: capped tenants' actual recovery vs. cap; flag any tenant recovering >95% of a capped ceiling, which signals the cap will bind next year
8

Pull 12 months of percentage rent reports against sales breakpoints

Verify: reported sales vs. breakpoint; flag any tenant within 5% of a breakpoint who isn't paying overage
9

Map co-tenancy and exclusive-use clauses to current anchor/inline occupancy

Verify: any co-tenancy trigger tied to a tenant with <12 months remaining or below investment-grade credit
10

Reconcile CAM billed vs. CAM collected over trailing 12 months

Verify: collection rate by tenant; flag chronic under-90% collectors separately from vacancy-driven shortfall
11

Verify vacant/dark units against sales reporting requirements and radius restrictions

Verify: no active exclusive-use clause is being violated by a proposed backfill tenant

Metrics that matter for retail

Metric	Target	Calculation
CAM recovery ratio	>85% of billable CAM	CAM/tax/insurance actually collected / total recoverable CAM expense per the leases
Occupancy cost ratio	<12% (inline), <6% (anchor)	(base rent + CAM + percentage rent paid) / tenant gross sales
Co-tenancy exposure	<15% of GLA at risk	sum of rentable SF with an active co-tenancy trigger tied to a single anchor / total GLA
Occupancy cost ratio	8–12% for anchors, 10–15% for in-line	total occupancy cost / tenant sales
Sales PSF	varies by category	reported tenant sales / leased SF
Recovery ratio	>90%	recovered expenses / recoverable expenses

Red flags unique to retail

Co-tenancy clause active against an anchor with under 12 months remaining

if the anchor vacates or doesn't renew, inline tenants can invoke reduced rent or kick-out rights simultaneously, a single lease event can cascade into 20-30% of the rent roll
Percentage rent breakpoints set below current sales with no overage collected

either the landlord isn't billing overage it's contractually owed, or the sales reports haven't been audited, both mean the roll is understating in-place income
CAM recovery rate near a tenant's contractual cap for two consecutive years

the cap will bind the following year, meaning the owner absorbs 100% of further expense growth on that tenant regardless of what the roll shows today
Co-tenancy trigger above 70% occupancy

common anchor departure clause that can cascade into reduced rent across the center
CAM cap below 3% annual

suppresses expense recovery and flows inflation directly to NOI
Exclusive-use clauses blocking lease-up

limits the pool of replacement tenants even before the space goes vacant
Radius restrictions under 3 miles

constrains the operator's ability to relocate or expand nearby

Example — retail rent roll analysis walkthrough

A 145,000 SF grocery-anchored retail center in suburban Atlanta is trading at $32M, roughly $221/SF. The rent roll shows a 92% leased grocery anchor, 18 inline tenants, $2.68M in base rent, and $410,000 in CAM/tax/insurance recovery, underwriting to a 6.1% in-place cap rate.

The CAM reconciliation is the first stop. Pulling the trailing 12-month CAM billing against the T-12 operating expenses, recovery comes in at 82% of the $500,000 total recoverable expense, below the 85% target. Three inline tenants have CAM caps at 3% annual growth; two of them are now paying at 98% and 100% of their cap ceiling. Expense growth has been running 5.5% annually, so both caps will bind fully next year, and the owner will absorb the difference, an estimated $9,400/year in unrecovered growth going forward.

The percentage rent file is where it gets more expensive. Four inline tenants have percentage rent clauses with breakpoints between $350-$500/SF in annual sales. Pulling 12 months of tenant sales reports, one 3,200 SF specialty tenant is reporting $187/SF in sales, while the prior year's estimated sales used in underwriting assumed $410/SF, sourced from a broker's rounded estimate rather than an audited sales report. That single correction removes an assumed $9,800 in annual percentage rent the pro forma had counted as in-place income.

The red flag is co-tenancy. The center's largest inline tenant, a 22,000 SF junior anchor paying $14/SF NNN, carries a co-tenancy clause triggered if the grocery anchor's lease terminates or the anchor's space sits dark for more than 90 days. The anchor's lease has 14 months remaining with no renewal signed. If the anchor doesn't renew, the junior anchor's rent drops to 50% of base, a $154,000 annual hit, and four other inline tenants have kick-out rights tied to the same trigger.

Between the CAM cap exposure ($9,400), the percentage rent correction ($9,800), and the co-tenancy risk on renewal ($154,000 contingent), the roll's clean 6.1% cap rate understates both near-term erosion and a lease-renewal contingency large enough to restructure the deal around an anchor-renewal condition precedent.