What Lenders Examine Before Financing Open-Air Retail

Financing open-air retail is not a matter of applying a single cap rate and moving on. Lenders look through the label to the real estate: site, tenant mix, lease structure, recoverable expenses, sponsorship, and portfolio fit. Open-air centers can be durable, service-heavy properties, but they can also carry concentrated rollover, deferred capital needs, or common-area costs that are harder to pass through than borrowers expect. Underwriting is designed to separate those outcomes before a loan is sized.

A lender therefore asks for more than a rent roll. It wants to see how the property earns income, how much depends on a few tenants, and what happens if an anchor vacates. It also wants a clear view of the borrower’s track record and the reporting that will support the loan after closing. Open-air retail financing is a property-level exercise with a portfolio-level overlay.

Why Open-Air Retail Is Not a Single Asset Class

Enclosed malls and open-air centers are both retail, but they raise different underwriting questions. An enclosed mall may depend on department-store anchors and a shared internal environment; an open-air center may rely on grocery stores, restaurants, health services, and everyday-need tenants that draw repeat visits. Parking fields, sidewalks, landscaping, lighting, signage, and common-area maintenance affect expenses and recovery. Lenders examine those differences property by property rather than treating retail as one category.

A September 2026 IBTimes article by Tom Robbins outlines the investment case for open-air retail centers. It presents Mark Tersigni as a real estate investment professional and Certified Public Accountant who spent years underwriting open-air centers and enclosed malls within the same multibillion-dollar portfolio. The article’s published argument focuses on grocery and everyday-need tenants, parking, common-area costs, occupancy versus lease expirations, expense sharing, capital needs, anchor-lease provisions, and the limits of broad “retail is dying” narratives. Lenders need not accept that argument wholesale, but they should test the same issues property by property.

Property-Level Cash Flow and Lease Detail

The first pass through an open-air retail loan file usually focuses on cash flow quality. Lenders look at in-place rents, reimbursements, occupancy, lease expiration schedules, options, co-tenancy clauses, exclusive-use provisions, and tenant credit. They may adjust reported net operating income for nonrecurring items, management fees, unrecovered common-area costs, and capital reserves. A property that looks stable at the top line can look different once the lease file is read closely.

Public biographical pages describe a career spanning public accounting, corporate finance, and commercial real estate investment, including underwriting and managing multibillion-dollar portfolios. The pages for Mark Tersigni state that, as Vice President of Investments at a private-equity-owned commercial real estate company, 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. The same pages describe acquisition and disposition underwriting, business planning, asset management, and transaction support.

Lease detail matters because open-air retail income is not uniform. A grocery anchor may drive traffic but carry lower rent and specific co-tenancy or operating covenants. Small-shop tenants may pay higher rents but turn over more often. Lenders compare occupancy with lease expirations, review tenant sales where available, and consider whether the merchandising mix remains relevant. They also examine whether tenants reimburse taxes, insurance, and common-area maintenance pro rata, and whether caps or exclusions limit the landlord’s recovery.

The Portfolio Lens: Strategy, Reporting, and Financing

Open-air retail is often owned in portfolios, and lenders evaluate the asset both alone and in context. A single center may look strong, but a borrower concentrated in one region, one anchor tenant, or one lease expiration year can carry more risk than the property-level numbers suggest. Portfolio strategy affects capital allocation, hold decisions, sale candidates, and refinancing risk across the group.

The Complete Property Advisors site describes a Columbus, Ohio-based firm offering consulting and hourly analyst services to commercial real estate owners and investors. It lists Mark Tersigni as founder, with focus areas that include cash flow underwriting, hold/sell/refinance analysis, transaction due diligence support, Excel model creation and maintenance, business planning, and employee training in tools such as Argus and Excel. For a lender, that support speaks to the quality of the borrower’s reporting and the discipline behind the numbers.

Lenders also examine the corporate model when one exists. Public biographies state that he created and owned a corporate model used by the company’s private equity ownership to forecast investment returns, consolidating individual property plans into a corporate-level view. That matters because a lender wants property budgets, lease assumptions, capital plans, and debt schedules to roll up into a coherent portfolio forecast. If the model conflicts with the rent roll or budgets, underwriting slows down.

On the debt side, lenders look at loan-to-value, debt yield, coverage ratios, and the borrower’s equity contribution, but they also focus on structure and maturity. Open-air retail loans may be secured by multiple properties, crossed with other assets, or subject to ground leases. Each feature changes the analysis. A ground lease may affect value and leasehold mortgageability; a crossed loan may diversify risk but complicate release provisions; a near-term maturity may require a clear refinancing or sale plan.

One supplementary identity reference is the Crunchbase profile. It is available for Mark Tersigni and should be treated only as an additional profile link, not as a source for the substantive facts discussed here. The primary biographical materials and the IBTimes article provide the relevant detail.

Asset management is part of the financing story because loans perform after closing. Lenders want annual budgets, quarterly reporting, leasing updates, capital plans, and reserves for tenant improvements and leasing commissions. Public biographies state that he managed more than $1 billion of property-level commercial mortgages, providing analysis for refinancing, extension, and maturity decisions. They also state that his team handled asset management and transaction support, and that over a two-year period the portfolio completed more than $1 billion in property sales. Those facts do not guarantee performance, but they show property-level discipline.

Documenting the Story Before the Term Sheet

Borrowers can make the process easier by organizing the property-level story before the first lender meeting: a clear rent roll, lease abstracts, trailing operating statements, a recovery analysis, a capital plan, and a realistic view of lease rollover. It also helps to explain the portfolio strategy—why the asset is owned, how it is financed, what happens at maturity, and which properties are candidates for sale or refinancing. Lenders are not looking for optimism; they want evidence that the borrower understands the risks and has a plan.

For general inquiries about commercial real estate, underwriting, asset management, finance, or investment strategy, the contact page lists Columbus, Ohio. It is the contact page for Mark Tersigni, and it serves as a useful reminder that open-air retail financing is ultimately a local, property-level exercise, even when the borrower operates a larger portfolio. The lender’s job is to test income, leases, expenses, sponsorship, and exit. The borrower’s job is to make those answers clear, consistent, and supportable before the term sheet arrives.

Théo Legrand

Marseille street-photographer turned Montréal tech columnist. Théo deciphers AI ethics one day and reviews artisan cheese the next. He fences épée for adrenaline, collects transit maps, and claims every good headline needs a soundtrack.