Reciprocal Easement Agreement (REA): The Shopping Center Rulebook Behind Your Net Lease

What it is

A reciprocal easement agreement — usually just called an REA — is a recorded contract among the owners of the different parcels that make up a shopping center. It says who gets to drive across whose parking lot, who maintains the shared areas, how signage works, and what each owner can and can't do with their piece of the property.

Here's the plain version: a shopping center looks like one property, but it's often chopped into separate legal parcels with separate owners. The REA is the glue that makes them behave like one center.

How it plays out in retail net lease

When you buy a single net-lease pad — say a freestanding building on its own parcel in front of a larger center — you're not just buying that building and its lease. You're buying into the REA that ties your parcel to everyone else's.

That document controls things that directly touch your income:

• Whether customers can drive from the main center's lot into yours (cross-access).
• How much you owe, or collect, for maintaining the shared parking and drives (common area maintenance, or CAM).
• What signage you're allowed on the pylon by the road.
• Sometimes, what kind of business can operate on your parcel at all.

Here's how I look at it: the lease tells you what the tenant owes you. The REA tells you what the property owes everyone else. You need both to understand what you actually own.

The mistake I see buyers make is treating the REA as boilerplate and skimming it, or skipping it entirely because the broker's package didn't include it. Then they find out after closing that their parcel carries an outsized share of lot maintenance, or that a use restriction limits who they can re-lease to if the current tenant leaves.

What to watch for

• Use restrictions and exclusives. The REA (or the anchor's lease referenced in it) may bar certain uses on your parcel to protect another tenant's category. That can shrink your pool of future tenants.
• CAM cost-sharing formula. Understand how shared costs are split. A formula based on square footage, parcel size, or a fixed percentage can put more or less on you than seems fair.
• Maintenance and repair obligations. Who repaves the lot? Who handles a failing shared retention pond or lighting? These can be real dollars.
• Access and parking rights. Confirm your parcel actually has recorded cross-access and parking rights — don't assume the striping you see is guaranteed forever.
• Amendment and termination provisions. See who can change the REA and how. Some let the anchor owner amend terms with limited consent from the pad owners.
• Term and self-operation clauses. Check when it expires and what happens to shared duties if a parcel sits vacant.

How to use it to your advantage

Pull the recorded REA early, during due diligence, and read it against the lease. If they conflict — and they sometimes do — you want to know before you're at the closing table.

A clean, balanced REA is a selling point. Guaranteed cross-access from a busy anchor's lot drives traffic to your tenant, and that supports the rent and the long-term durability of the location. When I'm underwriting a pad, favorable shared-access terms are a genuine plus, not a footnote.

If the REA is lopsided, you're not stuck — you use it in the negotiation. An unfavorable CAM split or a restrictive use clause is a reason to sharpen your price or ask the seller to clarify obligations before closing.

Best case, worst case

Best case:

• Recorded, permanent cross-access and parking that funnel anchor traffic to your tenant.
• A fair, predictable CAM split you can model.
• Use rights broad enough to re-lease easily if your tenant ever leaves.

Worst case:

• You inherit an outsized maintenance or CAM burden you didn't price in.
• A use restriction limits your future tenant pool.
• Access or signage rights turn out to be weaker than the site "looks," hurting traffic and re-leasing.

---

This is general education, not investment, tax, or legal advice. Every REA is different — read the actual recorded document and verify the specifics independently with your own attorney and advisors.