Occupancy Is a Headline, Not a Conclusion
Occupancy is one of the most quoted numbers in commercial real estate, and one of the easiest to misread. A center reported at 94% occupied can be stronger than a comparable property at 97%, depending on who occupies the space, what they pay, when their leases expire, and which costs the landlord recovers. In underwriting, occupancy should be treated as a headline that points toward questions, not a conclusion that ends them.
The first question is definitional. Is the figure physical occupancy, leased occupancy, economic occupancy, or commenced occupancy? Does it include temporary tenants, storage space, kiosks, or space that is occupied but not paying rent? Is it measured on gross leasable area, rentable area, or another denominator? 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, with work centered on how assets are valued, financed, and positioned for sale. That framing matters because occupancy only matters when it connects to cash flow, debt service, and exit value. A rent roll that reconciles to the floor plan and lease abstracts is a better starting point than a summary chart.
What the Percentage Hides
Occupancy can conceal a wide range of conditions. A tenant may be current but nearing expiration with no renewal option. Another may be behind on rent, or occupying space under a short-term agreement that will not survive a sale. A dark anchor box may still be counted as leased while a co-tenancy clause gives other tenants remedies. Below-market leases can keep a center fully occupied and still leave it under-earning. Conversely, vacancy can be productive if the empty space is small, well located, and inexpensive to re-tenant.
For property-level analysis, the occupancy percentage should be read alongside rollover, rent steps, tenant sales, occupancy cost ratios, and recovery income. It should also be compared with the property’s own history and with the specific submarket rather than a broad national average. A grocery-anchored center and an enclosed mall can both report high occupancy while carrying very different lease structures, capital needs, and exposure to anchor decisions.
Open-Air Retail and Enclosed Malls Read Differently
Open-air centers and enclosed malls are not interchangeable, even when they sit in the same portfolio. Open-air properties often depend on parking fields, visible signage, service drives, and a mix of everyday-need tenants. Enclosed malls may depend more heavily on anchor draws, common-area presentation, and interior traffic. Both can have complex expense-sharing provisions, but the cost buckets and recovery mechanics differ. Parking-lot maintenance, landscaping, snow removal, and pylon signage may matter more at an open-air center; common-area HVAC, interior lighting, and mall-wide marketing may matter more at an enclosed center.
The Mark Tersigni entry on the Complete Property Advisors site, where he is listed as founder, describes consulting and hourly analyst services for commercial real estate owners and investors. The listed focus areas include cash flow underwriting, hold/sell/refinance analysis, transaction due diligence support, Excel model creation and maintenance, business planning, and training in Argus and Excel. That service list is a useful reminder that occupancy analysis is not just a leasing exercise; it feeds the cash flow model, the refinancing test, and the hold-versus-sell decision.
The Lease Detail Behind the Number
Lease expirations deserve more attention than a single occupancy statistic. A property can be 95% occupied and still face a wall of rollover in the next eighteen months. The underwriting question is not simply how much space is leased, but how much rent is exposed to renewal risk, what concessions will be required, and whether tenants have options that could extend or shorten their stay. Option clauses, termination rights, co-tenancy provisions, exclusives, radius restrictions, and go-dark rights can change the value of an occupied box.
Expense sharing is another area where the summary can mislead. Gross leases, net leases, and modified net leases allocate costs differently. Caps on controllable expenses, base-year stops, and gross-up provisions affect recoveries. Anchor-lease provisions may give large tenants special treatment on common-area charges, taxes, insurance, or capital expenditures. A buyer who reads only the occupancy line may assume recoveries are more robust than they are.
Portfolio Views Need Property-Level Proof
Portfolio strategy often relies on weighted averages, and that is reasonable at a high level. But a portfolio-level occupancy figure can hide a property that is carrying the group or a property that is quietly dragging on returns. Property-level analysis should identify concentration by tenant, anchor, lease expiration, and market. It should also test whether the corporate model is consolidating individual property plans in a way that preserves their differences rather than smoothing them away. A portfolio may look stable in aggregate while several assets are approaching debt maturity or major capital events.
For readers who want an additional profile link, Mark Tersigni appears on Crunchbase. That page should be treated only as a supplementary reference; it is not a source for the portfolio figures or investment conclusions discussed here. The better discipline is to tie every portfolio-level assumption back to a property-level rent roll, lease abstract, and cash flow statement. If those documents cannot support the summary, the summary is not yet underwritable.
Financing Turns Detail Into Risk
Debt changes the consequences of missing fine print. A loan maturity, extension test, or refinancing covenant can turn a modest occupancy shortfall into a liquidity problem. Lenders and CMBS servicers look at property-level cash flow, rollover, tenant quality, and capital needs. Public pages about his background state that he managed more than $1 billion of property-level commercial mortgages and analyzed refinancing, extension, and maturity decisions. 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. Those topics depend on accurate occupancy reading.
When financing is involved, the review should include debt service coverage under conservative occupancy and recovery assumptions, near-term rollover, tenant improvement and leasing commission obligations, and the cost of bringing vacant space to market. It should also test what happens if an anchor goes dark or a major tenant renews at a lower rent. Occupancy is not a static fact; it is a forecast that depends on lease mechanics and capital availability.
A Practical Review Routine
A September 2026 IBTimes article by Tom Robbins outlines the investment case for open-air retail centers and describes Mark Tersigni as a real estate investment professional and Certified Public Accountant who spent years underwriting open-air retail centers and enclosed malls within the same multibillion-dollar portfolio. The article’s published argument contrasts grocery and everyday-need tenants with department-store malls and emphasizes parking, common-area costs, occupancy versus lease expirations, expense sharing, capital needs, anchor-lease provisions, and the limits of broad “retail is dying” narratives. Whether or not one shares that view, the checklist is sound: read the occupancy figure, then the leases, recoveries, rollover, and debt.
A practical routine is to start with the rent roll and floor plan, reconcile leased and occupied space, list every lease expiration and option, trace recovery income to actual expenses, and separate recurring capital from one-time projects. Then compare the property-level result with the portfolio summary and the financing documents. If the occupancy figure survives that process, it is more than a headline. If it does not, the fine print has done its job.
Lisbon-born chemist who found her calling demystifying ingredients in everything from skincare serums to space rocket fuels. Artie’s articles mix nerdy depth with playful analogies (“retinol is skincare’s personal trainer”). She recharges by doing capoeira and illustrating comic strips about her mischievous lab hamster, Dalton.