BOMA rentable square footage is a number somebody chose.
Every lease in the building is priced off it. Most of the time nobody has measured it since the building was built, and the drawing it came from was never verified. We measure it against the standard and give you a number you can defend.
Why BOMA rentable square footage drifts
BOMA rentable area is not a physical measurement of a tenant's space. It is usable area plus that tenant's share of the building's common areas, calculated to a published standard. Three things move it, and all three happen quietly:
- The building changes. A lobby gets reconfigured, a corridor moves, a suite is demised into two. Every one of those changes the load factor for everybody in the building.
- The standard changes. BOMA has revised its office standard several times. A building measured under one edition and re-let under another will not produce the same number, and the lease rarely says which edition was used.
- Nobody re-measures. The figure gets carried forward from lease to lease, stack plan to stack plan, broker to broker, for decades. It is copied, not verified.
The result is that a building's rentable area is frequently a number with no traceable origin, and it is the multiplier on every rent check.
Who needs it measured, and why
Owners and asset managers
If the building is under-stated you are giving away revenue on every square foot, every month, for the life of every lease. If it is over-stated you are carrying a liability that surfaces the first time a tenant with a good lawyer decides to check.
Buyers in diligence
The rent roll is priced off rentable area. If nobody has verified it, the income assumption underneath the valuation is unverified too. Measuring during diligence is cheap relative to what it protects.
Tenants and their brokers
On a large lease a load-factor discrepancy of a few percent is real money over ten years. An independent measurement is leverage, and it costs a fraction of the first month's rent.
Anybody re-stacking a building
Demising a floor changes usable area, common area and the load factor for every tenant on it. That is the moment to establish the number properly rather than estimate it.
What we deliver
A measured floor plan in DWG on AIA standard layers, with usable area, common area and rentable area calculated per floor and per suite, plus the load factor. Plotted sheets in PDF, the measured wall geometry in DXF, and an interactive walkthrough so anyone reviewing the numbers can see the space the numbers describe.
What we do not do: we are not a licensed surveyor and this is not a boundary survey. We measure the interior against the BOMA standard and state our tolerance. If your situation needs a sealed survey, that is a different professional and we will say so at scoping.
Accuracy is roughly one centimeter on wall distances — about 0.5% on distance, 1% on area. The full accuracy discussion is here, including how it compares to the ANSI standard used on residential work.
Which BOMA standard do you measure to?
Tell us which edition the lease references and we measure to it. If nobody knows — which is common — we will measure to the current office standard and flag the difference against whatever figure is in use, so you can see the size of the gap before deciding what to do about it.
How is this different from the ANSI square footage on your other page?
ANSI Z765 is the residential standard and measures the building itself. BOMA is the commercial standard and allocates common area across tenants, which is why it produces a larger number than the space you can actually stand in. Different standards, different purposes, and a building can legitimately have both.
Can you measure an occupied building?
Yes, and most of them are. Capture is quiet, takes no power and displaces nobody. For tenanted floors we schedule around access rather than asking tenants to clear out. Occupied space needing after-hours or phased access carries a 25% complexity uplift, published on the pricing page.
What if the measured number is lower than the number in our leases?
Then you have found something worth knowing, and you have found it from an independent measurement rather than from a tenant's consultant. What you do next is a legal and commercial question rather than a measurement one, but you will be making that decision with a defensible number instead of an inherited one.
How long does it take?
Capture is a few hours for a typical floor plate. Deliverables come back in 48–72 hours. A whole building is usually one or two days on site depending on floor count and access.
Phoenix metro. Anywhere within 35 miles of Gilbert — Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Scottsdale, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Queen Creek and the rest of the Valley — carries no mobilization charge. Outside that, travel is quoted from the published zone table, and we work nationally.