By Daniel Akselrod · July 2026

Intake Forms for Commercial Real Estate: Property Classification, Due Diligence, and Transaction Documentation

A client calls about “buying a building.” Fifteen minutes into the conversation, you learn the building is a 42,000-square-foot mixed-use property with ground-floor retail tenants on month-to-month leases, a second-floor medical office suite with three years remaining on a triple net lease, and two floors of vacant Class B office space that the buyer wants to convert to residential under a recently adopted zoning overlay. The seller is a limited partnership that acquired the property through a 1031 exchange in 2019 and is now structuring another exchange into a DST. There is an open Phase I environmental assessment that flagged a recognized environmental condition from a prior dry-cleaning tenant. The existing mortgage has a due-on-sale clause. And the buyer’s lender is requiring a Phase II before committing to the construction loan for the residential conversion.

That is one phone call. One property. And it involves at least six distinct categories of information — property classification, tenant profile, environmental status, zoning compliance, financing structure, and exchange requirements — that a generic real estate intake form was never designed to capture. Commercial real estate transactions are fundamentally different from residential deals, and the intake process needs to reflect that difference from the first point of contact.

Property type classification: why the asset class drives the entire file

Commercial real estate is not one market — it is at least six, and each asset class carries its own underwriting criteria, regulatory requirements, and transaction risks. Your intake form needs to classify the property type before you capture anything else, because the classification determines which downstream fields are relevant.

Office. Class A, B, or C designation affects valuation multiples, tenant credit quality, and capital expenditure expectations. Your intake should capture the building class, total rentable square footage, current occupancy rate, and whether the property is single-tenant or multi-tenant. A single-tenant net-lease office building occupied by a Fortune 500 company under a 15-year lease is a bond-like investment. A multi-tenant Class C office building at 62% occupancy is a turnaround play with an entirely different risk profile.

Retail. Anchored versus unanchored strip centers, single-tenant outparcels, regional malls, and neighborhood service centers each have distinct tenant mix considerations. Capture the anchor tenant (if any), percentage-rent clauses, co-tenancy provisions, and exclusive-use restrictions. A pharmacy anchor with a co-tenancy clause that lets it reduce rent if the grocery anchor vacates is a ticking time bomb that belongs on your intake form, not in your discovery file.

Industrial. Warehouse, distribution, flex, and manufacturing properties differ in clear height, dock-high loading, column spacing, and power capacity. These physical characteristics determine the tenant pool and directly affect valuation. A 28-foot clear-height distribution facility near an interstate interchange is a different asset than a 14-foot clear-height flex building on an arterial road, even if the square footage is identical.

Multifamily. Garden-style, mid-rise, high-rise, and mixed-income housing each carry distinct regulatory frameworks — rent stabilization, affordable housing covenants, housing authority compliance. Capture the unit count, unit mix (studio, one-bed, two-bed), current average rent per unit, and any LIHTC or Section 8 obligations that run with the property.

Mixed-use and hospitality. Mixed-use properties require intake fields for each component — the retail ground floor, the office floors, the residential units above — because each component may have its own lease structure, regulatory overlay, and valuation methodology. Hospitality assets (hotels, extended-stay, boutique) require RevPAR history, franchise agreement status, PIP obligations, and flag affiliation details that are irrelevant to every other asset class.

Transaction type: the structure shapes the documentation

Commercial transactions are not just purchases and sales. The transaction type determines the documentation stack, the timeline, and the professional team required. Your intake form should identify the transaction type up front with a clear set of options:

• Purchase or sale — the baseline transaction. Capture whether the client is buyer or seller, the anticipated purchase price or price range, the proposed closing timeline, and any contingencies already discussed in preliminary negotiations.
• Lease negotiation — landlord-side or tenant-side representation. Capture the proposed lease term, renewal options, rental rate structure (per square foot, per month, percentage rent), and whether tenant improvement allowances are expected. Lease transactions often involve longer negotiation timelines than acquisitions, and the intake should note whether an LOI has already been signed.
• 1031 exchange — the timeline pressures are severe. The 45-day identification period and 180-day closing deadline run from the sale of the relinquished property. Your intake must capture the exchange type (delayed, reverse, improvement), whether a qualified intermediary has been engaged, the identification deadline, and the closing deadline. Missing an exchange deadline is a malpractice exposure that begins at intake.
• Refinancing — capture the existing loan balance, current interest rate, maturity date, prepayment penalty terms, and whether the refinancing is recourse or non-recourse. Many commercial borrowers refinance to pull equity for acquisitions elsewhere, and the intake should capture the intended use of proceeds.

Due diligence: the fields that prevent post-closing surprises

Due diligence in commercial real estate is not a checklist you hand to a paralegal — it is a structured investigation that can make or kill a deal. Your intake form should identify which diligence items are already completed, which are pending, and which have surfaced issues that require resolution before closing.

Environmental. Phase I Environmental Site Assessments are standard on virtually every commercial transaction. But the intake needs to go further: has a Phase I been completed? Did it identify any recognized environmental conditions (RECs), controlled RECs, or historical RECs? Is a Phase II (subsurface investigation) required? Has the property ever had underground storage tanks, dry-cleaning operations, gas stations, or manufacturing uses? Environmental liability survives closing and can exceed the property value. A $2 million warehouse with $4 million in remediation liability is not a $2 million deal — it is a loss.

Title and survey. Commercial title commitments routinely contain exceptions that are deal-relevant: easements that restrict development, restrictive covenants that limit use, encroachments revealed by the survey, and mineral rights reservations. Your intake should capture whether a title commitment has been ordered, whether a current ALTA/NSPS survey exists, and whether any known title defects or boundary disputes are pending.

Zoning and land use. Capture the current zoning classification, whether the property’s current use is conforming or legally nonconforming, whether any variances or special permits are in place, and whether the buyer’s intended use requires a rezoning or conditional use permit. ADA compliance is a separate but related issue — commercial properties open to the public must comply with accessibility standards, and renovation projects that exceed certain cost thresholds trigger mandatory ADA upgrades. This is frequently overlooked until the building permit stage, when it becomes a budget-busting surprise.

Lease structures: triple net, gross, and everything between

For investment properties with existing tenants — or for lease transactions where your client is negotiating new tenancy — the intake form must capture the lease structure in specific detail. The difference between a triple net lease and a full-service gross lease is not a footnote; it determines the property’s actual net operating income and, by extension, its value.

Triple net (NNN). The tenant pays base rent plus property taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance. The landlord’s income is effectively net of all operating expenses. Capture the base rent, the estimated NNN charges, the reconciliation method (actual versus estimated with annual true-up), and any caps on controllable expenses.

Modified gross. The landlord and tenant split operating expenses according to a negotiated allocation. Your intake should specify exactly which expenses the tenant bears and which the landlord absorbs — this varies by deal, and there is no standard split.

Full-service gross. The tenant pays a single rental amount and the landlord pays all operating expenses. But most full-service leases include a base-year stop — the landlord covers expenses up to the base year’s actual costs, and the tenant pays its proportionate share of any increase above the base year. Capture the base year, the base-year expense amount, and the tenant’s proportionate share.

CAM charges and tenant improvement allowances. Common area maintenance charges are a perennial source of landlord-tenant disputes. Your intake should capture the CAM structure (fixed, variable with cap, variable without cap), what is included in the CAM pool (management fees? capital reserves? parking lot resurfacing?), and the reconciliation timeline. Tenant improvement allowances — the landlord’s contribution to build-out costs — should be captured as a dollar-per-square-foot figure along with the disbursement method (lump sum at lease execution, reimbursement against receipts, or construction draw schedule).

LOI terms and financing contingencies

Many commercial transactions begin with a Letter of Intent before a purchase and sale agreement is drafted. If an LOI has already been signed or is under negotiation, your intake should capture its key terms: purchase price, earnest money amount, due diligence period length, financing contingency deadline, and any exclusivity or no-shop provisions. LOIs are typically non-binding on the substantive deal terms but binding on exclusivity, confidentiality, and broker commission — and that distinction matters at intake because the binding provisions create immediate obligations.

Financing contingencies in commercial deals are more complex than their residential equivalents. Your intake should capture the loan-to-value ratio the buyer is targeting, the type of financing (conventional bank, CMBS, SBA 504, bridge loan, mezzanine), whether the loan is recourse or non-recourse, the interest rate lock status, and any lender-imposed conditions precedent such as Phase II environmental clearance, updated appraisals, or tenant estoppel certificates. A deal that is contingent on CMBS financing has a fundamentally different risk profile than one backed by a conventional bank relationship — CMBS underwriting is rigid, rate-locked to specific windows, and subject to bond market volatility that neither buyer nor seller controls.

If the client is also managing residential real estate assets, the considerations differ significantly — buyer and seller intake for residential agents covers the pre-approval, disclosure, and agency fields specific to that side of the business. For clients with larger portfolios that include managed rental properties, the property management intake guide addresses tenant screening, maintenance tracking, and owner-reporting workflows that overlap with commercial asset management.

Bringing it together: why commercial intake cannot be an afterthought

A commercial real estate file that starts with a disorganized intake is a file that will stay disorganized through closing. The property classification determines the diligence requirements. The transaction type determines the documentation stack. The lease structure determines the valuation. The financing contingency determines the timeline. And the environmental status determines whether you have a deal at all. Each of these categories feeds into the others, and missing any one of them at intake means playing catch-up for the rest of the transaction.

The attorneys, brokers, and property managers who handle commercial real estate professionally do not treat intake as an administrative task. They treat it as the foundation of the deal file — because in a business where a single missed environmental condition or overlooked lease provision can cost six or seven figures, the information you capture on day one is the information that determines whether the deal closes cleanly or collapses at the finish line.