The Parsons Group

Founded in 1907, the Building Owners and Managers Association, head quartered in Washington DC, with branches and affiliates worldwide to support local members, is a wealth of building resources which includes, among myriad other subjects, a standard (which also happens to be an ANSI document) by which space in buildings can be measured for rentable area where a building’s common space is equitably shared by all tenants.

BOMA 1996 vs BOMA 1989

“To measure to BOMA 1989, one floor may be measured by itself, proportionately distributing the common area on the floor amongst that floor's tenants.

“However, main floor tenants can end up paying for common space that is common to the entire building, not just to the main floor tenants, so BOMA came up with a revision to the 1989 standard in 1996.

“To measure to BOMA 1996, the entire building must be measured. Common space is categorized as either: 1) common to one floor (or distinct area) only, or 2) common to the entire building, and measured accordingly. It is usually the case that in any given building there is space common to the building, such as the main floor washrooms, the main floor elevator lobby, a building's main electrical room in the parkade, a custodial storage room, etc, etc. The procedure is first, for each floor, to apportion all the floor common spaces to that floor's tenants, much the same as the way BOMA 1989 works. Then, the building common space is apportioned to all tenants. With BOMA 1996, the main floor tenants only pay for what they use, and the tenants on upper floors pay their share of the building common space found on other floors.

“The goal is ultimately to arrive at the most fair situation for all tenants. In my humble opinion, BOMA 1996 does a good job at that. BOMA 1989 rentable area figures, on the other hand, for upper floor tenants typically end up being multiplied by a factor of between 1.05 and 1.15 to account for the building common space on main and other floors. For instance, while BOMA 1989 has no provision for allocating a roof top mechanical room, typical of many newer building and even some older ones, BOMA 1996 considers a roof top mechanical room to be building common space, so long as it is completely enclosed, and distributes that area to all building tenants.

“All that being said, the choice is up to the property owner, agent, or manager whether to measure to BOMA 1989 or BOMA 1996. But one should also keep in mind that a very large number of properties are being measured to BOMA 1996, at least in my own experience, where, of a few hundred buildings I have measured for half that many clients, I can think of less than 5 that were measured to BOMA 1989. I can conclude therefore that it is doubtless beneficial to both tenants and managers that, in any one market area, buildings are all measured to the same standard. This way, proverbially, everybody is talking apples and nobody talks oranges.” - Gerry Parsons