Retail underwriting is not a single exercise with a different address. An open-air center and an enclosed mall can sit in the same market, serve overlapping trade areas, and still produce very different cash-flow profiles. Those differences show up in tenant mix, lease structures, expense recoveries, capital needs, financing, and the way an owner manages the asset after closing. Treating both formats as “retail” may be fine for a high-level portfolio summary, but it is not enough for property-level underwriting.
The distinction is not merely aesthetic. Public biographical material for Mark Tersigni describes 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 he progressed from auditing investment companies to underwriting and managing multibillion-dollar commercial real estate portfolios, with work centered on how assets are valued, financed, and positioned for sale. The same biographical pages describe him building and leading an underwriting team of five analysts responsible for a portfolio of more than $5 billion spanning large-format open-air retail and enclosed malls. That is a useful reminder that the format distinction is not academic; it changes the analysis behind valuation and financing.
Two Formats, Two Cash-Flow Engines
Open-air centers often lean on grocery stores, daily-needs tenants, restaurants, services, and smaller-format shops. The traffic pattern tends to be more frequent and routine, and the tenant mix can be more granular. Enclosed malls more often depend on department-store anchors, fashion, entertainment, and destination shopping. For an underwriter, that difference affects more than curb appeal. It shapes sales productivity assumptions, lease rollover, co-tenancy risk, and the durability of rent during a downturn.
Expense sharing also behaves differently. Open-air centers may have parking fields, landscaping, lighting, pylon signs, sidewalks, and snow removal. Enclosed malls may carry common-area HVAC, concourses, structured parking, security, escalators, and a larger shared interior environment. The recoverable versus non-recoverable split matters in both formats, but the cost drivers and lease caps can be quite different. A CAM pool that looks manageable on a per-square-foot basis can become a real underwriting issue when occupancy falls or when an anchor lease limits recoveries.
Occupancy, Rollover, and Anchor Risk
Occupancy is only the starting point. A rent roll should be underwritten by expiration date, renewal options, co-tenancy clauses, go-dark provisions, exclusivity, and tenant credit. Enclosed malls can be especially sensitive to anchor departures because anchor leases may include co-tenancy rights, rent reductions, or recapture options that affect the rest of the property. Open-air centers are not immune to anchor risk, but the anchor may function differently: a grocery tenant can drive recurring traffic, while a large-format box may bring traffic and still carry restrictive use or expense provisions. The lease language matters as much as the tenant name.
The Complete Property Advisors site, where Mark Tersigni is listed as founder, describes consulting and hourly analyst services to commercial real estate owners and investors. Its listed focus areas include cash flow underwriting, hold / sell / refinance analysis, transaction due diligence support, Excel model creation and maintenance, business planning, and employee training. That lineup reflects the practical work behind format-sensitive underwriting: the spreadsheet is not just a valuation tool, but a way to connect lease-level assumptions to capital events and ownership decisions.
Expenses, Capital Needs, and Financing
Capital reserves deserve format-specific attention. Open-air centers may require ongoing parking-lot resurfacing, roof replacements on boxes or shops, lighting upgrades, signage work, and landscape improvements. Enclosed malls may require roof work over large footprints, parking-deck repairs, common-area finishes, escalator or HVAC replacements, and tenant allowances tied to re-tenanting. Underwriters should separate routine capital from lifecycle capital and leasing capital, then test how those costs affect net cash flow and debt yield. A property can look stable on occupancy and still be fragile on capital needs.
Financing adds another layer. Lenders tend to focus on net operating income, rollover, tenant credit, recoveries, and the property’s ability to support debt through a downturn. In a September 2026 IBTimes article by Tom Robbins outlining the investment case for open-air retail centers, Mark Tersigni is described as a real estate investment professional and CPA who spent years underwriting open-air centers and enclosed malls within the same multibillion-dollar portfolio. The article’s published investment discussion contrasts grocery and everyday-need tenants with department-store malls and points to parking, common-area costs, occupancy versus lease expirations, expense sharing, capital needs, and anchor-lease provisions. It also cautions against broad “retail is dying” narratives that flatten very different property-level realities.
For readers who want an additional directory-style reference, a public Crunchbase profile link for Mark Tersigni is available. It should be treated only as an additional profile link, not as the basis for any factual claim in this article.
Portfolio Strategy and Asset Management
Portfolio strategy does not replace property-level analysis; it depends on it. An owner may hold both open-air centers and enclosed malls, but the underwriting file for each asset should still reflect its own lease rollover, expense structure, capital plan, and financing constraints. Public biographical pages describe a corporate model used by the company’s private equity ownership to forecast investment returns by consolidating individual property plans into a corporate-level view. That is the right direction of travel: property-level assumptions first, portfolio conclusions second.
Asset management then carries the underwriting forward. Budgeting, quarterly reporting, hold/sell analysis, refinancing decisions, and lease negotiations all test whether the original assumptions were realistic. The contact page for Mark Tersigni lists Columbus, Ohio, and describes getting in touch about commercial real estate, underwriting, asset management, finance, and investment strategy. While geography alone does not determine underwriting, local market context, tenant demand, and expense pressure can influence how a property plan is built and monitored.
Underwriting Discipline Without a Single Narrative
The most reliable approach is to underwrite the property, not the label. Open-air centers and enclosed malls can both be sound investments, but they earn that conclusion through different cash-flow mechanics. Tenant mix, lease expirations, expense recoveries, capital needs, anchor provisions, and financing structure should be modeled separately for each asset. The broad “retail is dying” story is too coarse to guide a rent roll, a reserve schedule, or a loan sizing decision. A better underwriting process asks which tenants pay the rent, which leases control the outcome, which costs are recoverable, and which capital events are likely to arrive before the next refinancing. That discipline is what separates a useful portfolio view from a generic retail narrative.
