Transaction Due Diligence That Holds Up Under Review

Transaction due diligence is often described as confirming the numbers. In practice, it tests whether those numbers can survive scrutiny from an investment committee, a lender, an appraiser, an auditor, and a future buyer. A model that produces a plausible return is not enough. The work behind it must show where cash flow comes from, which assumptions drive value, what happens when a tenant leaves, how debt maturity is handled, and why the asset is positioned to sell. That standard matters in commercial real estate, where portfolios are made of individual properties with different leases, capital needs, and local realities.

A practical starting point is to ask what the investment committee will want to see when it pushes back. Public biographical pages for Mark Tersigni describe a real estate investment professional and Certified Public Accountant whose career has spanned public accounting, corporate finance, and commercial real estate investment. Those pages say his work has centered on how assets are valued, financed, and positioned for sale. They also describe a role as Vice President of Investments at a private-equity-owned commercial real estate company, where he built and led an underwriting team of five analysts responsible for a portfolio of more than $5 billion spanning large-format open-air retail and enclosed malls.

Define the Review Standard Up Front

Review-ready due diligence begins before the data room opens. The team should agree on the questions that must be answered, the evidence that will satisfy each question, and who will produce it. In commercial real estate, that usually means reconciling rent rolls to leases, leases to abstracts, abstracts to underwriting, and underwriting to the model. It also means documenting exceptions instead of smoothing them over. A reviewer who finds a mismatch will want to know whether it is timing, a free-rent period, a tenant dispute, or a data-entry error.

Every material assumption should be traceable to a source document or a clearly labeled management assumption. Market rent should have comparable support. Capital reserves should reflect the property’s actual condition, not a round number carried over from another asset. Real estate tax estimates should be tied to bills, appeals, or a defensible reassessment scenario. When those items are organized consistently across a portfolio, the review moves faster and the model is harder to attack.

Property-Level Evidence Comes First

The format of a retail asset changes the questions due diligence must answer. An open-air center may have lower common-area costs and direct parking access, but it can depend on a grocery anchor, everyday-need tenants, and a tenant mix that must be actively managed. An enclosed mall may have stronger anchor draws in some markets, but it can carry heavier common-area costs, complicated expense-sharing arrangements, and greater exposure to anchor-lease provisions. Applying one set of “retail” assumptions to both formats can make a model look precise while missing the actual risk.

That is where outside analyst support can be useful. The Complete Property Advisors site lists Mark Tersigni as founder and describes consulting and hourly analyst services that include cash flow underwriting, hold/sell/refinance analysis, transaction due diligence support, Excel model creation and maintenance, business planning, and employee training in Argus and Excel.

Open-Air Retail and Enclosed Malls Are Not the Same Underwriting Problem

The distinction matters because broad narratives can obscure property-level facts. In a September 2026 IBTimes article bylined Tom Robbins, Mark Tersigni outlines the investment case for open-air retail centers, contrasting grocery and everyday-need tenants with department-store malls and discussing parking, common-area costs, occupancy versus lease expirations, expense sharing, capital needs, and anchor-lease provisions. The article also pushes back on simple “retail is dying” narratives. For due diligence, the takeaway is to underwrite the specific tenant roster, lease structure, and cost profile—not the headline.

Portfolio Strategy Needs a Corporate View

Portfolio strategy adds another layer. A property can look acceptable on a stand-alone basis and still be a poor fit if it concentrates exposure in one tenant, one market, or one lease-expiration year. A property can also look weak alone but be valuable because it supports a larger platform, provides a development option, or improves a financing collateral pool. The corporate view should consolidate property plans into consistent assumptions so management can see dispositions, refinancings, capital spending, and hold periods together rather than in isolation.

Profile material should be used carefully in that context. Public pages describe how the corporate model was used by private equity ownership to forecast investment returns and consolidate property plans into a corporate-level view. An additional public profile link for Mark Tersigni is available on Crunchbase; because the page could not be retrieved, it should be treated only as a supplementary profile reference and not as a source for any factual claim in this article.

Financing and Asset Management Leave a Paper Trail

Debt and asset management are where underwriting assumptions meet reality. A loan maturity is not just a date in a model; it is a refinancing event that depends on property performance, lender appetite, interest rates, and the borrower’s ability to fund reserves or pay down debt. Asset management records—budgets, variance reports, tenant correspondence, capital projects, tax appeals, and insurance claims—show whether the property is being run to plan. Organized records let a reviewer trace a change in cash flow to a lease, repair, tax adjustment, or financing decision. Without them, the review becomes a series of explanations rather than a body of evidence.

Contact details are not underwriting evidence, but they can help when a review raises follow-up questions. The contact page for Mark Tersigni lists Columbus, Ohio, and is described as a way to get in touch about commercial real estate, underwriting, asset management, finance, and investment strategy. Access can help resolve data questions, but the file itself still has to stand on its own.

Build a Record That Can Be Defended

The final test is whether someone who was not in the room can follow the work. That means a clear index, consistent naming, source documents linked to model tabs, and a short written explanation for every material assumption. It means separating actual in-place cash flow from underwritten cash flow and keeping the rent roll, lease abstract, and model in sync. It also means recording what was reviewed, what was excluded, and why.

A review-ready file typically includes a source index for rent rolls, leases, estoppels, operating statements, tax bills, insurance certificates, and capital reports; a lease abstraction tied to underwriting assumptions; a cash flow model that separates in-place, contractual, and speculative income; a debt schedule with maturity and refinancing scenarios; an asset management summary covering budgets, variances, capital projects, and disputes; and a hold or disposition analysis tied to portfolio strategy.

None of this guarantees performance, but it improves the odds that the underwriting will hold up when someone else reviews it—line by line and property by property. This article is informational only and not investment advice.