A structured due diligence checklist for commercial real estate acquisitions, focusing on lease review, rent roll verification, and risk identification. This checklist covers everything an acquirer needs to verify during the lease review phase of a property acquisition or portfolio purchase. It pairs with rent roll analysis to surface economic exposure before closing.
By Angel Campa, Founder · Updated March 2026
Used by acquisition teams, real estate attorneys, and investors during the due diligence period following a letter of intent on a commercial property or portfolio acquisition.
Lextract automatically extracts these fields from your lease PDF — eliminating the manual data collection underlying this checklist.
All leases should be reviewed. For large portfolios, a tiered approach is common: full abstraction for anchor and major tenants (typically leases representing 80% of revenue), and a summary review for smaller tenants. Lextract makes it cost-effective to abstract all leases regardless of portfolio size.
The most common oversight is failing to identify all outstanding landlord obligations — particularly unfunded TI allowances, deferred maintenance commitments written into lease side letters, and unexercised expansion options that the seller neglected to disclose. These represent real capital calls post-closing.
Co-tenancy clauses allow tenants to pay reduced rent or terminate their lease if an anchor tenant vacates. An acquisition with a single anchor tenant with multiple co-tenancy-linked leases carries concentrated risk. Buyers typically apply a discount to the purchase price reflecting the probability-weighted impact of co-tenancy triggers.
A 126-field lease extraction template organized by category. Each field includes where to find it in the lease, common extraction errors, and whether ASC 842 requires it.
A comprehensive checklist of 126 data fields every commercial lease abstraction should capture. Organized by category for easy reference.
A commercial lease is a legally binding contract between a landlord and a business tenant. Learn the key terms, lease types, and critical clauses before you sign.
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Due Diligence Checklist
A structured due diligence checklist for commercial real estate acquisitions, focusing on lease review, rent roll verification, and risk identification. This checklist covers everything an acquirer needs to verify during the lease review phase of a property acquisition or portfolio purchase. It pairs with rent roll analysis to surface economic exposure before closing.
