BOMA Standards

What are BOMA Standards and How Do they Apply to Commercial Real Estate Portfolios?

‍

Key takeaways:

BOMA standards establish a consistent method for measuring and reporting commercial space, allowing leases, valuations, and expense recoveries to rely on comparable, documented area data.

Different BOMA standards apply across office, industrial, retail, and mixed-use properties because space is shared, allocated, and monetized differently by asset type.

Through its involvement with the Building Owners and Managers Association, Visitt supports education around how standardized measurement data connects to inspections, maintenance, and work orders as portfolios grow more complex.

What are BOMA standards?

BOMA standards are industry-recognized standards of measurement from the Building Owners and Managers Association that define how commercial real estate (CRE) floor area is measured and reported. They establish how usable, rentable, and common areas are calculated so leasing terms, valuations, and expense recoveries rely on consistent, comparable area data.

BOMA area standards specify:

• How space is classified
• Where measurement lines are drawn
• How shared elements such as corridors, lobbies, and vertical penetrations are treated. 

These rules determine whether square footage is counted as tenant space, floor common area, building common area, or excluded entirely, and how that space is allocated across occupants. Because office towers, industrial and flex buildings, retail properties, and mixed-use assets divide space, share amenities, and recover costs differently, each BOMA standard defines the right measurement outputs for the asset type:

1. Office buildings: BOMA measurement standards for office allocate common areas proportionally to tenants to calculate rentable area.
2. Industrial and flex buildings: BOMA industrial building measurement standards account for varied layouts and typically smaller proportions of shared space.
3. Retail properties: BOMA area calculation standards for retail focus on Gross Leasable Area, aligning measurement with how retail space is leased and valued.
4. Mixed-use, residential, hospitality, and gross-area standards: Additional standards support proportional allocation, unit-level reporting, or whole-building analysis depending on the use case.

Who are BOMA standards for?

BOMA standards are used by:

• Building owners
• Property and facility managers
• Asset and portfolio managers
• Brokers
• Architects
• Space planners
• Appraisers
• Tenants

Namely, anyone responsible for interpreting or relying on square footage to promote positive tenant experiences uses BOMA lease standards.

In practice, these standards support lease drafting, rent calculations, operating expense recoveries, benchmarking, valuation, and portfolio comparison across properties that would otherwise be measured differently. They also provide a consistent foundation for commercial real estate property management, where space data flows into building operations, work order management, contract management software, vendor agreements, and long-term asset planning.

How spaces are measured under BOMA standards

Under BOMA standards, he same wall can be measured differently depending on what the space is, what it touches, and why the measurement is being used. For example, an office suite next to a corridor is measured differently from the same suite next to another tenant. A retail unit at street level is measured differently from the identical footprint on an upper floor. A stairwell is excluded entirely, unless it serves a single tenant across multiple floors.

The table below shows how BOMA measurement standards handle these situations in practice, using space classification to control boundaries and area outcomes:

Why should CRE firms comply with BOMA standards?

Each BOMA standard provided CRE firms with a consistent and defensible framework for translating physical space into financial, legal, and operational outcomes. The same square footage figure often travels far beyond a floor plan. It is embedded in lease exhibits, used to calculate recoveries, and referenced in valuation and underwriting models. When that figure is produced using a consistent measurement standard, each of those uses rests on the same assumptions. When it is not, discrepancies surface later as pricing gaps, challenged expenses, or conflicting views of asset performance that are difficult and costly to resolve. 

At the portfolio and investment level, compliance with BOMA standards of measurement strengthens credibility and decision-making. Assets measured outside the relevant standard often present distorted results, overstating income or obscuring inefficiencies. Standardized measurement supports reliable comparison across properties and markets, while reducing friction with tenants by grounding discussions in a recognized methodology rather than interpretation. For appraisers, owners, and asset managers, BOMA compliance becomes a foundation for accurate valuation, benchmarking, and long-term planning.

As such, key BOMA standard compliance outcomes for CRE firms include:

• Comparable area data that supports leasing, valuation, and portfolio analysis
• More accurate income and expense allocation aligned with documented standards
• Reduced risk of tenant disputes through consistent measurement language
• Greater confidence in reported figures during financing, acquisition, and resale
• A stronger basis for evaluating asset performance and long-term value

How are BOMA standards used across different CRE property types?

BOMA standards are applied where measured space directly affects rent, recoveries, valuation, and long-term asset performance. Each property type uses a different BOMA standard because space is shared, monetized, and recovered differently, and those differences change how square footage must be calculated and relied on.

Office buildings

BOMA measurement standards for offices are used to convert tenant-occupied space into rentable area by allocating floor and building common areas back to tenants. Because office tenants benefit from shared lobbies, corridors, washrooms, and service rooms, these areas are proportionally distributed rather than excluded, directly shaping lease economics, portfolio benchmarks, and even office maintenance flows.

Industrial and flex buildings

BOMA industrial building measurement standards are applied to properties with highly variable layouts and limited shared space, where tenants control most of the usable area. In practice, the standard is used to validate lease areas during due diligence, refinancing, and portfolio audits, as well as in industrial property management, especially where large floor plates make small measurement errors financially meaningful. Because common areas play a smaller role in leasing and cost recovery, gross-ups are usually minimal, and in some cases are excluded entirely.

Retail properties

The BOMA measurement standards for retail are used to calculate Gross Leasable Area (GLA) in a way that reflects how retail space produces revenue at the storefront level. Measurement focuses on exterior walls, street frontage, and qualifying exterior or semi-enclosed areas, with exterior boundaries typically measured to the outside face rather than the interior. In practice, these measurements are used to assess performance per square meter, supporting leasing decisions across locations and clarifying responsibility for frontage, signage, and shared areas.

Mixed-use buildings

In mixed-use properties, BOMA standards are applied to manage the interaction between different occupancy types within a single structure:

1. Office, retail, residential, and hospitality components are first identified as distinct-use components.
2. Shared lobbies, cores, and circulation spaces are allocated proportionally based on the relative size of each component. 
3. Once allocated, each component is measured using its applicable single-use BOMA standard. 

This approach prevents double-counting, supports consistent valuation and reporting, and allows space data to be reused across CRE data analytics, building compliance software, and tenant communication tools and other systems that track tenant operations and obligations across overlapping uses.

Residential, hospitality, and gross-area analysis

For residential and hospitality assets, BOMA standards are used for analysis, with area measurements supporting unit-level reporting, operating expense allocation, and long-term planning in properties where performance depends on how space is operated, not how it is leased. At the portfolio level, these standards provide a consistent basis for assessing total building size during acquisitions and asset comparisons, and are commonly aligned with International Property Measurement Standards (IPMS) when properties are evaluated across markets.

What does BOMA standard compliance look like with Visitt?

As a member of the Building Owners and Managers Association, Visitt collaborates with the BOMA community through content, conferences, and speaking engagements focused on how innovation and AI are shaping modern building operations, including how standardized building data supports valuation and the operational workflows smart buildings rely on. Within the Visitt platform, this shows up in how BOMA-aligned area information is embedded into facility management records and reused across inspections, maintenance planning, and work orders execution as part of daily operations.

This work helps onsite teams and CRE leaders apply BOMA standards consistently across commercial property inspections and commercial property maintenance, enabling them to manage, reference, and apply standardized area information with greater accuracy, so operational data and asset-level decisions stay aligned as portfolios scale.

See how Visitt helps turn BOMA standards into actionable property operations across your portfolio.