An ARGUS Enterprise model is only as good as the lease data behind it. Upload your leases and the AI abstracts the rent steps, reimbursement method, free rent, TI, and options the model needs, each citing its source page.
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ARGUS Intelligence added a rent roll import that speeds up model setup, and it is genuinely useful. It is also narrower than most analysts expect, because it reads a spreadsheet rather than the lease. Here is the honest split between what the importer can populate and what an analyst still has to abstract by hand.
| Input an ARGUS model needs | Covered by the ARGUS rent roll import? | Where the value actually lives |
|---|---|---|
| Tenant, suite, and rentable area | Yes, if the rent roll spreadsheet already carries it | Parties and premises clauses, plus any area certification or remeasurement amendment |
| Base rent and rent steps | Yes. Altus states the import can auto-map leases and rent steps | The base rent schedule, as changed by every amendment and extension |
| Reimbursement method | No. Recovery structure is not part of the rent roll import | Operating expense clauses: base year stop, fixed amount, net, or gross, plus caps and gross-up |
| Free rent and abatements | No | Rent abatement clause, a side letter, or an amendment granting concession months |
| Tenant improvement allowance | No | The work letter or TI exhibit, which is often a separate document from the lease body |
| Renewal, termination, expansion options | No | Option clauses, including the notice window and how option rent gets set |
| Percentage rent and breakpoints | No | The percentage rent clause and its natural or artificial breakpoint |
Verified against Altus Group documentation in August 2026. Altus states the ARGUS Intelligence Platform "will read your MS Excel files, analyze row and column and propose a field mapping", and that users can "upload rent rolls, auto-map leases and rent steps, and push tenant data directly into existing ARGUS Enterprise models". It is a spreadsheet importer, not a lease reader. Altus also offers lease abstraction separately as a managed service, and publishes no pricing for ARGUS Enterprise.
The usual ARGUS workflow starts with a seller rent roll or an argus-ready spreadsheet from the broker, and the analyst keys the rest in from the leases under deal pressure. The model runs. Whether it reflects the leases is a different question, and it usually surfaces late, when a lender or an investment committee asks why a recovery line moved.
A rent roll is someone else's assertion about the leases, often prepared by the seller. It carries whatever step, area, or expiration was in the last file, and an importer that reads it faithfully will import the errors just as faithfully.
Base year stop, base year stop minus one, fixed amount, net, and gross all produce different cash flows on the same expense pool. That choice is buried in the operating expense clause, and getting it wrong misstates recoveries for the whole hold period.
Renewal and termination options drive rollover, downtime, and the market leasing assumption that applies. When the notice window or the option rent method is read quickly, the model prices a rollover that the lease does not actually allow.
When every input was retyped, there is no fast way to prove a number. A question about one recovery line during diligence turns into a hunt through a folder of PDFs, on the clock, with the deal waiting.
Upload the leases and the AI abstracts each one into the inputs an ARGUS Enterprise model is built from, reads the amendments alongside the base lease, and exports a clean spreadsheet with every value linked to the page it came from.
The full base rent schedule is abstracted, including fixed bumps, CPI escalations, and steps added by later amendments, so the rent curve in the model matches the lease rather than the starting rent.
The recovery structure is pulled from the operating expense clauses: base year and stop amount, fixed recovery, net or gross treatment, caps, and gross-up language, so the recovery structure is chosen from the document.
Renewal, termination, expansion, and contraction options are captured with the notice period and how option rent is determined, which is what drives rollover and market leasing assumptions.
Abatement months and tenant improvement allowances are abstracted as their own fields, including where they sit in a work letter or side letter rather than the lease body.
The abstract downloads as a spreadsheet you can shape into the rent roll layout your model expects, or hand to the ARGUS Intelligence rent roll import as a clean, lease-sourced file.
Each rent, date, recovery, and option links back to the exact page, so a question about any line in the model is answered in seconds instead of a search through the document folder.
A repeatable way to build the lease dataset behind an ARGUS model, whether it is one asset or a portfolio under a diligence deadline.
Collect the base lease plus every amendment, extension, work letter, side letter, and area certification. The rent roll is useful as a cross-check later, but it is not the source you build from.
Tip: Missing amendments are the single most common cause of a wrong rent step in an ARGUS model.
Drag the documents in together. The AI reads amendments alongside the base lease so the term, the current rent step, and any renegotiated recovery structure reflect the lease as it stands today.
OCR reads each page, including scanned and image-only PDFs, then the AI populates rent steps, reimbursement method, free rent, TI, options, and percentage rent, flagging any low-confidence value for review.
Check the flagged fields against their linked source pages, export to Excel or CSV, then key or import the inputs into ARGUS Enterprise with a source citation behind every number.
The questions US acquisitions, valuation, and asset management teams ask before they change how lease data reaches an ARGUS model.
ARGUS Enterprise is Altus Group's commercial property valuation and cash flow forecasting software, now delivered as part of the ARGUS Intelligence Platform. Altus describes it as supporting lease by lease modeling for a transparent view of all assured income, across office, industrial, retail, and multifamily, with market leasing assumptions for new, vacant, and renewing space. It is the standard underwriting model in much of US commercial real estate, which is why the quality of its lease inputs matters so much.
Not from lease documents. ARGUS Intelligence added a rent roll import that reads Excel files and pushes tenant data into an existing ARGUS Enterprise model, but it imports a spreadsheet somebody already prepared. It does not open a lease PDF and read the reimbursement method or the option notice window out of it. Altus does sell lease abstraction, as a separate managed service staffed by people. The fuller answer is in our post on whether ARGUS Enterprise does lease abstraction.
ARGUS produces excellent rent roll and cash flow reporting once the leases are in it, and Altus advertises more than 40 industry-standard asset and portfolio reports. What it does not do is build the rent roll from the underlying documents. If your input rent roll is a seller file, ARGUS will report it back to you cleanly whether or not it matches the leases. Building the rent roll from the leases first is covered in how to build a rent roll from leases.
Altus publishes no pricing. The ARGUS Enterprise page directs buyers to contact the company to find the right subscription, and notes add-ons for portfolio performance management and benchmarking, so the number depends on seats, modules, and term. Treat any per-seat figure circulating on third-party blogs as unverified. We take the same approach to every platform in our ASC 842 lease accounting software pricing comparison, where only published figures appear.
At minimum, per tenant: suite and rentable area, lease commencement and expiration, the full base rent schedule with every step, the reimbursement method and its base year or cap, free rent months, tenant improvement allowance, and each renewal, termination, or expansion option with its notice window. Retail adds percentage rent and the breakpoint. Every one of those is a clause in the lease or one of its amendments, which makes populating an ARGUS model a lease abstraction job before it is a modeling job. The complete field set is in our commercial lease abstract template.
Acquisitions teams underwriting a deal on a deadline, valuation and appraisal groups running models for clients, asset managers refreshing hold-sell analysis, and lenders sizing a loan against in-place income. The common thread is that all of them are judged on numbers that trace to leases they did not write. Abstracting the population once, to consistent fields with citations, means the model, the credit memo, and the investment committee deck all sit on the same lease-sourced dataset. For the diligence workflow around it see lease abstraction for acquisition due diligence, and for the lender view, lease abstraction for lenders. Teams running a whole book at once start with bulk lease upload.
Still have questions? Our team is happy to help.
Talk to our teamNot from lease documents. The ARGUS Intelligence rent roll import reads Excel files and pushes tenant data and rent steps into an existing model, but it imports a spreadsheet rather than reading a lease PDF. Altus sells lease abstraction separately as a managed service, which confirms the modeling software and the reading step are two different jobs.
Altus states it will read your MS Excel files, analyze row and column, propose a field mapping, then auto-map leases and rent steps and push tenant data into existing ARGUS Enterprise models. In practice that covers tenant, area, and the rent schedule when the source spreadsheet already holds them. Recoveries, options, free rent, and TI are not part of it.
You can, and many analysts do under deadline. The risk is that a rent roll is an assertion about the leases prepared by someone with an interest in the outcome. It commonly shows the starting rent instead of the current step, omits recoveries, and says nothing about option notice windows. The importer will carry those gaps straight into the model.
The reimbursement method. Base year stop, base year stop minus one, fixed amount, net, and gross produce materially different recovery cash flows from the same expense pool, and the choice is buried in the operating expense clause with its caps and gross-up language. It is the field most worth reading off the lease rather than inheriting.
Altus does not publish pricing. The product page asks buyers to contact the company to find the right subscription and mentions add-ons for portfolio performance management and benchmarking, so cost depends on seats, modules, and term length. Per-seat figures quoted on third-party sites are not verifiable against Altus's own materials.
Yes. Bulk upload runs hundreds of leases in one batch to the same field set, which is the shape acquisition diligence needs when a model is due before the deadline. Because every lease is abstracted to identical fields, the ARGUS inputs stay consistent across assets instead of varying by whoever keyed each property.
The abstract exports to Excel or CSV, which you can shape into the rent roll layout the ARGUS Intelligence import expects, or key in directly. The gain is not the file format. It is that every rent step, recovery, and option in the model traces to a cited lease page instead of a spreadsheet nobody can source.
The same job for SAP Flexible Real Estate Management.
Learn moreBuild the rent roll from the documents before it reaches a model.
Learn morePortfolio-wide lease data for underwriting and reporting.
Learn moreIn-place income a credit memo can stand behind.
Learn moreThe same job for CoStar Real Estate Manager.
Learn moreEvery field a complete lease abstract should capture.
Learn moreAbstract a whole portfolio in one batch before a closing.
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