Costs for maintenance of common spaces, lobbies, storage, or vacant spaces are called:

• A. Direct maintenance costs
• B. Indirectly attributable costs
• C. Overhead costs
• D. Capitalizable costs

Answer: (B)

Costs for maintaining areas that serve the whole building, like lobbies, storage, and vacant spaces, are not tied to a single tenant or space. Because they benefit the entire facility and can’t be charged to one specific cost object, they have to be allocated as indirect costs. In facility management terms, these are the indirectly attributable costs that support the operation of the building as a whole and are typically recovered through common-area maintenance charges (CAM). They aren’t direct maintenance costs, which would be tied to a specific space, and they aren’t capitalizable costs, which would involve long-term improvements rather than routine upkeep.