BOMA Booster: Analyzing Income and Expenses for Commercial Properties

The industry benchmark for 75+ years, BOMA is a compilation of income and expense data for commercial properties across North America compiled by the Building Owners and Managers Association International.

Create Your Own Reports  

The Experience Exchange Reports (EER) are quite specific and include an Occupancy Survey as well as an Income/Expense Report. In addition to overall rental income and operating expenses, the reports include details such as expenses for Cleaning (e.g. window washing), Repair & Maintenance (e.g. HVAC), Utilities, Security, Administration, and Parking.

BOMA allows screening on more than a dozen variables. The basic screen above allows selection by:

• Country (US or Canada)
• Market (Metropolitan Area)
• Sector (Private/Public or both)
• Location (Downtown/Suburbs or both)
• Building Size (There are five categories ranging from less than 50,000 sq. ft to                   more than 600,000 sq. ft.)

Reports (typically three pages) can be downloaded to EXCEL or saved as a PDF.

The image above shows an excerpt of a report where we screened for privately owned buildings in Philadelphia, of 100,000 square feet or more, located either downtown or in the suburbs. Additional screens could include:

• Building type
• Ownership Type
• Number of Floors
• Proximity to Public Transportation
• Age of Building

Below is a portion of the same report showing the section on Income and Expenses.

The BOMA database is easy to use. First time users will need to create an account on the BOMA website. The account creation mechanism is a bit clumsy, but instructions are provided once you authenticate through the Penn proxy. Despite this drawback, BOMA is a unique data source for commercial real estate research.

For more resources that cover the real estate industry, take a look at our Real Estate Industry Research Guide and our Business FAQ on real estate.