Before a bid goes in, an acquisitions team wants three things: what the property is, what it might be worth and on which numbers, and what is still unknown. The six questions below are the ones teams at funds and investment firms ask. Each is answered in the first paragraph, then shown on one finished Titleman run on a real downtown office tower.
Prepared by Titleman AI, on behalf of the Titleman team. The run is a Value Opinion made on a Titleman QA account on 15 October 2026, with the address left out. Figures were rechecked against the run's own answer on 17 October 2026. A value opinion is a draft for a licensed professional to review, not an appraisal.
How can an acquisitions team get a first underwriting of a commercial property from just an address?
Send the address, name the asset class, and attach whatever you hold. Titleman's Value Opinion reads the property's record, finds recorded sales and nearby listings, builds an income view and a sales view, and lists what it could not establish. On the run read for this page, the answer arrived 1 hour 24 minutes after the request, with no documents attached.
The request was one line: the address and "office building". What came back:
| Item | The run |
|---|---|
| Documents attached | None |
| Delivered | 1 hour 24 minutes after the request (the start message estimated about 60 minutes) |
| Files with the answer | A memo, a comps map, a competitor map, an Excel workbook, a red-flags file, a risk register and a property-history file |
From the address alone, the answer established:
- The asset. A 42-story Class A tower built in 1992, standing and occupied by many tenants, with 238 city permits on its record since 2006.
- The last trade. Sold on 25 June 2024 for $151,300,000, which is $253.70 per SF of heated area. The tower was 83% leased at that sale and had been renovated for $21,000,000 before it.
- The assessed value. $128,237,654 for 2026, or $215.03 per SF, which is $23,062,346 below the last sale.
- Two 2026 office sales near enough to matter. $156.29 per SF (a recapitalization 0.22 miles away) and $187.23 per SF (a seven-story building 6.94 miles away).
The answer then said what it did not give: a price. It stated the facts, the method and the inputs, and left the number to the workbook.
How do you check the numbers in a seller's offering memorandum before you bid?
Put each figure beside the property's own record and beside the other documents: building area, sale history, occupancy, taxes, income. A mismatch is often a difference in definition, so ask which one the memo used. On the run read for this page the building's area came back five different ways, so any per-SF number in a memo depends on which area it uses.
The run had no memorandum to check. It shows the kind of mismatch to look for. The same building's area came back five ways, and the last sale works out to a different price per SF on each:
| Area used | SF | Last sale per SF |
|---|---|---|
| State figure | 717,686 | $210.82 |
| Heated area on the tax record | 596,383 | $253.70 |
| Leasing site | 580,710 | $260.54 |
| 2024 broker release | 572,111 | $264.46 |
| Gross area on the tax record | 897,315 | $168.61 |
The run chose the heated area to compare against the other sales, because those came from the same register on the same basis, and used the leasing site's area for rent. It stated both choices. Two smaller catches sit in the same answer: the 2024 sale date appears as 25 June in the deed and 26 June in the press release, and the tax record carries the land at $100 against a land line of $4,434,960. A memo that quotes one of these without saying which is a question for the seller's broker, not a finding.
When you do hold the memorandum, the underwriting product reads it with the rent roll and the trailing twelve months and ties the documents to each other. Figures the documents state win over an assumption. For the checklist, see how to check the numbers in an offering memorandum.
What should an AI value opinion on an acquisition target contain, and which numbers in it are assumptions?
It should show the income method, a sales cross-check and a cash-flow view, and mark each input as found or assumed. In the run read for this page the building's area, taxes and last sale were found. The rent premium, vacancy, operating cost, reserves and cap rate were assumptions, each stated so you can replace it.
The run's income method, the lead method because the building earns rent, was a chain you can read line by line:
| Step | Input | Found or assumed |
|---|---|---|
| Rentable area | 580,710 SF | Found |
| Rent | $38.91 per SF per year for downtown Class A, plus a 10% premium for this tower | Market figure found, premium assumed |
| Vacancy and credit loss | 12% | Assumed |
| Operating cost | $10.00 per SF, plus property tax of $2,530,809 ($14.36 per SF in all) | Cost assumed, tax found |
| Reserves | $2.50 per SF | Assumed |
| Stabilized NOI | $12,082,177 | Result |
| Cap rate | 7.75%, chosen inside a 6.2% to 8.6% band from two sources that disagree | Assumed |
The sales view was labeled the cross-check, not the lead: only two sales qualified, and one was a recapitalization. Four other trades were shown and not used, among them a ten-year-old sale and a lender-driven short sale with no price disclosed. A 10-year cash-flow view grew NOI 2% a year, exited at 8% less a 1.5% cost of sale and discounted at 8%. For why two runs on one asset can differ, see why two runs can disagree.
How do you stress-test cap rate, rent and debt limits on a deal before it goes to investment committee?
Move the inputs that carry the answer, one at a time, and see where the conclusion breaks. Cap rate and rent move an income-based value most, so use a grid of the two. Then test debt against a lender's limits: loan to value, debt service coverage and debt yield. Replace the assumed terms with a real term sheet as soon as you have one.
In the run, the cap rate was called the most sensitive single input, and the workbook carries a grid of rent against cap rate. The cash-flow view has a down case and an up case: growth moved by one point and the exit cap by +50 and -25 basis points.
For debt, the run gave the limits a lender would apply, and no loan amount:
- a maximum loan to value of 60%;
- a minimum debt service coverage of 1.35;
- a minimum debt yield of 10%;
- a rate of about 6.5% on 30-year amortization.
All four were assumptions with their basis on the Assumptions sheet, and no lender quote was obtained. Your house standards (hold period, exit cap, rent growth, vacancy, operating expense inflation, management fee) can be set once and ride with every underwriting you run. Check the Assumptions row before you start, because if you have not set your own, the run uses the shipped defaults. For the definitions, see what is a cap rate and what is DSCR.
What can a desk underwriting not establish, and what should you request before the deposit goes hard?
A desk run cannot see the seller's rent roll and operating statement, the lease expiry schedule, recorded mortgages, open permits and code cases, the tax bill, insurance cost or the condition of the building. Each has a document that closes it. Request those first and let the desk run work while they are in the mail.
The run listed what it could not establish, and the document that closes each item:
| Open item | What closes it |
|---|---|
| The building's rent roll, operating statement, lease expiry schedule and current occupancy | The seller's documents and tenant estoppels |
| Mortgages, and a second deed-type instrument carrying the 2024 sale date | The recorded documents themselves |
| Court case history: the records source did not answer on two tries | A case-index search on the owner and the address |
| Whether each permit is open or closed, and any code case or lien | The city's permit and code search |
| Tax bill and delinquency | The tax collector's account |
| Flood insurance, windstorm premium and capital plan for elevators, facade and roof | An insurance quote, an elevation certificate and a property condition report |
| Loan terms | A lender term sheet |
Two lines in that table are worth copying into your own process. The run did not report "no cases found" when its records source was silent; it said the check was not clean. And it flagged that the tower sits in a mapped flood zone (AE, base flood elevation 12 ft) and that three 2025 interior permits carry the city's floodplain tag, which can trigger flood-standard obligations on a building that has been improved enough.
How long does an AI underwriting or value opinion take, and what comes back?
Plan on about an hour, not minutes. The middle Value Opinion run takes 48 minutes and one in ten takes more than 104. The middle underwriting run takes 55.8 minutes. You get a memo, a presentation and the cited facts, and about half of finished runs also return an Excel workbook. Your own reading time is on top.
The run read for this page took 1 hour 24 minutes against an estimate of about 60, so treat the median as a middle, not a promise. The time is the machine's. Your own reading, and the documents that come from outside, are on top of it.
What comes back depends on what you send:
- Address only: a Value Opinion with the facts, the methods and the open items, as above.
- With the T-12, rent roll and OM: an underwriting that reads and ties them, with an IC memo (PDF and DOCX), a presentation and, on request, an Excel model. In the 30 days to 12 October 2026, 31 of 62 finished underwriting runs returned a workbook, and 62 of 113 finished Value Opinion runs did.
A workable order for a live deal: run the address on day one and read the open-items list before the headline; request those documents from the seller the same day; re-run with the rent roll and T-12 when they arrive, then take the memo to committee. The output is a draft for your own analyst and counsel to review. The bid, the price and the structure stay with your team. For measured timing, see how long AI underwriting takes.
Run it on your next target
Send the address of a deal you are screening, or one you already closed so you can compare the result with your own file. We run it and walk you through the facts, the inputs and the open items. Request a demo.