THE ACCESS COST AUDIT: HOW MUCH IS YOUR BUILDING SPENDING? It is easy to guess a rough number. A real one takes twelve months of invoices and a bit of honesty about staff time.
audit shouldn’t stop at the total. The more useful question is what that spend is actually buying. A property paying a comparable amount to what it paid years ago may now be getting far less capability than what’s available for similar or even lower, ongoing costs. Seen this way, modernizing access isn’t only a resident amenity decision. It’s a financial one, tied directly to efforts to reduce property operating costs and evaluated the same way as any other operating expense. cutting annual expenses by $ 3,000 adds roughly $50,000 in value ($3,000 ÷ 0.06) At a 6% cap rate,
Start with what’s traceable. Add up landline or telecom costs, rekeying and credential replacement, technician service calls, staff travel for vendor access, and hours spent on manual access management. The total is what the property is really paying to operate access each year. Costs vary widely depending on property size, system type, portfolio scale, and how a building is operated, so the exercise is worth running against a property’s own numbers rather than an industry average. This number matters beyond the invoice itself. Reducing recurring operating expenses increases net operating income (NOI), which drives property value. At a 6% cap rate, for example, cutting annual expenses by $3,000 adds roughly $50,000 in value ($3,000 ÷ 0.06), turning a modest recurring savings into a real balance sheet number. But the
WHAT MODERN BUILDING ACCESS SHOULD LOOK LIKE
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