Deal Brief template

What should be included in a commercial-real-estate Deal Brief?

Include the offering or investment memo, the current sources and uses, the capital stack with each piece's status, the operating or development budget, the rent roll or lease abstracts, the schedule and entitlement status, key third-party reports, and the email traffic where terms were actually agreed. Label every figure with its basis and date.

The most common gap is not a missing document. It is a number whose status nobody stated: a $52M term sheet and a $52M closed loan look identical in a spreadsheet and mean very different things to a lender.

Assembling a Deal Brief

1. Step 1

   Economics

   Sources and uses, budget, model export. These drive every ratio a lender computes.

2. Step 2

   Capital stack

   Each piece with its size, status, and the document that evidences it.

3. Step 3

   Schedule and diligence

   Entitlements, permits, GMP, third-party reports, closing conditions.

4. Step 4

   Review the basis labels

   Anything the platform was unsure about goes to the review queue before publishing.

A complete worked example

Harbor Point is a fictional deal built specifically to demonstrate the template. Nothing in it is a real deal, lender, or customer.

Fictional demonstration data.

Basis labels and states

• Every figure carries a basis: actual, budget, forecast, proposed, requested, or committed.
• Unknown, Unverified, Conflicting, Calculated and Outdated are preserved rather than smoothed away.
• Derived ratios expose their formula and inputs so a lender can check the arithmetic.
• Where two documents disagree, both are shown with their origin.

Common questions

What is a Deal Brief?

A Deal Brief is Brieflin's commercial-real-estate Brief. It organizes a deal's economics, capital stack, people, milestones, risks, due diligence, decisions, open items, files, and supporting evidence into one conversational link.A Deal Brief does not replace formal due diligence, a data room, or professional review.

What should be included in a commercial-real-estate Deal Brief?

Include the offering or investment memo, the current sources and uses, the capital stack with each piece's status, the operating or development budget, the rent roll or lease abstracts, the schedule and entitlement status, key third-party reports, and the email traffic where terms were actually agreed. Label every figure with its basis and date.

Does a Deal Brief replace due diligence?

No. A Deal Brief helps a counterparty understand a deal quickly and find the documents that matter. Formal diligence — legal review, appraisal, environmental, engineering, underwriting — still happens against the executed documents themselves. Brieflin does not provide any of that advice.A Deal Brief does not replace formal due diligence, a data room, or professional review.

How is Brieflin different from a data room?

A data room stores files. Brieflin organizes the context connecting those files and lets a recipient ask questions across the accumulated knowledge. A Brief may complement a data room; it does not replace formal diligence or professional review.A Deal Brief does not replace formal due diligence, a data room, or professional review.