Bob Knakal

“Bob, come over to my office. I am going to make your year!”

After getting this message, what would you do? What did I do? I dropped what I was doing and ran over to Harry Macklowe’s office.

It was 2003. The market was recovering from the recession in the early 2000s. Remember that Harry Macklowe was the whale that I cold-called for two and one-half years (from 1984-1987) before he took my call late at night when his assistant had already left the office and Harry picked up his own phone. Between 1987 and 2003, I closed several deals with Harry and was attaining a solid reputation for getting great prices for apartment buildings in NYC.

I waited for 15 minutes in Harry’s reception area, sweat streaming down my forehead due to the haste with which I hurried to his office. Finally, I was summoned in. “Bob, I have been watching what you have been doing, and I am very impressed. I need to sell my portfolio of 7 apartment buildings, and you are going to sell them for me” he said. I had never sold a deal for over $100 million in my career. These 7 buildings were worth way more than $100 million. “I know this would be the biggest deal you have ever done, and that’s why I know you will do everything possible to get me the best price possible for these buildings,” he added. My heart was racing, and I wanted to scream!!

Richard Parkoff was an “old timer” who had been around forever and owned a massive portfolio of apartment buildings in NYC. Most of what he owned were not the most prime buildings in the city but the tenants paid the rent, the cash flowed, and anyone in the world would want to own these buildings. To Richard’s credit, he treated brokers better than most. Every December, a great holiday gift would arrive. Sometimes wine, sometimes crystal, and in 2003, it was a silver coin from Tiffany with “heads” on one side and “tails” on the other. The enclosed card read, “The next time we discuss a deal, I hope it comes up “heads” for me!”.

Harry hired me exclusively, we brought the portfolio to market and Richard was interested. Richard made a strong offer, he and his son, Adam, read all 786 leases, and signed a contract a few days later. Things moved fast in those days. The deal closed at $179 million. I was on top of the world. At the closing, Richard said, “I told you I wanted the coin to come up heads for me!”.

The next day, I had the coin engraved at Tiffany with the inscription: “Macklowe to Parkoff 4/26/04 $179,000,000. I have carried that coin in my pocket every day since then.

In 2014 or '15, I was in Vegas for ICSC and ran into Adam at the bar at Bartolotta’s restaurant at the Wynn. Adam smiled at me when he saw me and said, “I bet you don’t have the coin on you.” I smiled back, and pulled my good luck charm out of my pocket. We both laughed. I will never forget Harry, Richard or Adam for providing me with this memory. And I will always have this good luck charm in my pocket for the rest of my days.

#throwbackthursday #BKREA

Today’s Throwback is a photo of Paul J. M. and I from 2006. This was one of the photos from a photo shoot we did for the cover of the Mann Report which was doing a cover story on our firm that year.

At the time, Jeff Mann was looking for photos that were different from the typical photos seen around commercial real estate circles and asked us to do this “Men in Black” retrospective in order to be more eye-catching. A photo from the photo shoot was used for the cover story in the September 2006 issue.

This is one that didn't make it but one that I found at the bottom of a box of old stuff from the Massey Knakal days. So glad I held on to all of these oldies but goodies!!

#ThrowbackThurday #BKREA #NYCRealEstate

Another great weekend for the Knakals visiting a great university, enjoying a very exciting hockey game (which the home team won in an outstanding overtime shootout) and a boisterous homecoming football game (won by the home team on a thrilling "pick-6")!

Lots of great things to see and do in Minnesota - and the Vikings and Wild were not even playing at home. And, of course, we enjoyed yet another outstanding dinner at one of our favorite steakhouses, Manny's!!

Great time all around but now its time to get back to work!!

#TheKnak #BKREA #NYCRealEstate

I attended The Real Deal event today and thought it was absolutely outstanding!!

Great speakers, especially my good friend Jeff Blau from Related Group! Got to meet some great folks who I hadn’t met before.

One thing that made a big impression on me was the significant number of folks who came up to me wanting to take a selfie with me. As I was walking around, I thought, ‘boy that feels pretty good’ when someone wants to take a selfie with you.

Then I turned around and saw my great friend and mentor Steve Siegel, the chairman of global global brokerage at CBRE, standing there and immediately whipped my phone out to take a selfie with him! If people were half as excited to take a selfie with me as I was to take a selfie with Steve, that would be awesome!!

Funny how things come full circle!! Steve, you are the greatest! Love you, my brother!!

I was at my country house in Connecticut and one of the things I did while I was there was a bit of “spring house cleaning,” even though we are in the summer. I was going through my desk here and came across “The Cork,” which is pictured in this post.

On December 31, 2014, the sale of Massey Knakal Realty Services to Cushman & Wakefield was closed. I remember vividly getting the call around 4 pm from our attorneys at Proskauer Rose to get final confirmation that we wanted the sale to, in fact, close. This apparently is a custom that I was unaware of until it was time to actually wrap the transaction up.

I remember sitting in a chair closest to the great room fireplace, taking the call, and letting the attorney know that I did, in fact, want to close the transaction. The myriad of emotions that I felt was surprising. Of course, I wanted the transaction to close. But what I was not anticipating was the different thoughts that were going through my head.

I had an immediate flashback to the first 10 years of operating the company when my net worth fluctuated between $0 and negative $180,000. You see, for years during the Savings & Loan Crisis, we operated the company on credit cards. I continued to increase my credit card holdings until my total available credit was $180,000. There were times I was “maxed out” and would not have been able to borrow another dime. Then a deal would close, and I would be up to minus $120,000. Then another and up to minus $40,000 and then another and, eureka, up to $0 – how great did that feel!!

A few more months would go by, and I was way back into the negatives, but all the while feeling confident that “one day, we will make it!”.

One step at a time, things kept getting better, and, yes, the early 2000s sucked, and '05, '06, and '07 were awesome but then the Great Financial Crisis hit and we had to fire far too many friends. That was gut-wrenching. But then we went on a tear, and Ed Forst and Cushman & Wakefield needed to beef up their NYC capital market presence for a larger sale (unbeknownst to us) and made our dreams come true.

We started with nothing, had a great idea, worked our butts off, and walked away with $100 million. I have no regrets. I miss those days, but the sale changed my life profoundly. My wife and I popped the champagne, and a massively important chapter of my life had ended.

Today, I am in a new chapter, after another chapter, and looking to make new memories and achieve new milestones. Regardless of what the future holds, the 26 years and 46 days of Massey Knakal will hold a special place in my heart forever!

#throwbackthursday #bkrea #nycrealestate

I am excited to share that I have signed a book deal with Simon Acumen, a division of Simon & Schuster for my next book, How to Sell.

For the last 42 years, I have had the privilege of selling commercial real estate in New York City. Along the way, I have sold more than 2,400 buildings, completed over $24 billion in transactions, and learned countless lessons about relationships, persistence, discipline, trust, negotiation, and what it really takes to succeed.

Many people think selling is about convincing someone to do something.

I've learned that the best selling is about understanding people, solving problems, creating opportunities, and building relationships.

How to Sell will share the most important lessons I have learned throughout my career—not just for brokers and salespeople, but for entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, professionals, and anyone who wants to communicate value more effectively and achieve better outcomes.

This project would not have been possible without the incredible support of my literary agent, Lynn Johnston of Lynn Johnston Literary, and the outstanding team at Simon & Schuster.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunity and excited to begin this next chapter.

More details to come.

The older I get, the more I realize that success leaves clues. This book is my attempt to share some of the most important ones I have found.

One of the biggest misconceptions about commercial real estate brokerage is that success comes from charisma, connections, or negotiation skills. In my experience, that’s never been true. The people who build lasting careers in this business are usually the people willing to do the things others quickly grow tired of doing.

When I started in commercial real estate in 1984, there was no sophisticated training program waiting for me. On my first day, I got to the office before sunrise, sat outside a locked office door waiting for someone to arrive, and eventually got told, “Go sell buildings.” That was the onboarding process.

At the time, I thought there had to be more to it than that. Surely the successful brokers had some secret system or hidden advantage. Over time, I realized the opposite was true. Most highly successful brokers simply mastered very basic disciplines and repeated them consistently for years.

Early on, Paul J. M. and I became obsessive about consistency. We were usually the first people in the office and among the last to leave. We cold-called constantly, tracked every building owner in our territory, followed up repeatedly, and spent enormous amounts of time learning the market.

None of that work was glamorous. Most of it was repetitive. A lot of it was frustrating. But consistency compounds in ways people underestimate.

One of the biggest mistakes I see today is people expecting success to happen quickly. They want immediate momentum, immediate recognition, and immediate results. Commercial real estate rarely works that way. Most great opportunities are built through long periods of discipline before anything meaningful becomes visible externally.

I’ve always believed commercial real estate is a very simple business, but simple doesn’t mean easy. We are not curing cancer or solving the theory of relativity. We are helping people buy and sell buildings. The challenge comes from having the discipline to execute the fundamentals repeatedly over long periods of time.

Anybody can prospect hard for a week. Anybody can stay motivated for a month. Very few people can maintain consistency year after year, especially when results are delayed.

That consistency eventually creates expertise. Expertise creates confidence. Confidence builds trust. And trust is what drives this business. Clients are trusting you with major financial decisions, family assets, and often decades of accumulated wealth.

The people looking for shortcuts are usually disappointed by this business. There is no magical script. There is no secret trick. There is no substitute for consistency.

Exceptional careers are usually built by doing very ordinary things extraordinarily consistently. That was true when I started in 1984, and it’s still true today.

Paul J. M. and I were always the first ones in the office back in the Massey Knakal days.

I can’t tell you how many days we looked at each other and asked ourselves what would happen if none of our 250 people showed up to work that day.

This illustrates the importance of the folks that you work with and how, for a brokerage company, your people are the most valuable asset that you have by far.

They need to be supported, trained, encouraged, and their self-esteem needs to be built-up so that they can achieve results above their expectations and, yes, they can do better than their best! In brokerage, your assets go up and down the elevator every day!!

Never forget that!

#NYCRealEstate #BKREA

All in the Family

So when I opened Massey Knakal with Paul J. M. on November 15 of 1988, we had a very modest 800-square-foot office at 16 East 52nd Street.

On the second day the office was opened, a package arrived at my office. It was this photo of George Washington on a horse, and it came from my Aunts, Blanche and Gladys. They were two of my four aunts, and these two lived right across the street from my family. They lived with my maternal grandfather, who had 5 daughters, all of whom adored him.

When the photo of George Washington arrived at the office, I immediately called my aunts and asked about the mysterious gift that came to my office.

As it turned out, my grandfather opened his own business in the 1930s. He was an assistant plumber who started his own plumbing business when he wanted to achieve greater things than working for someone else would allow.

Apparently, my grandmother showed up at my grandfather’s shop at 218 East 82nd Street the day my grandfather started his company and gave him this great photo of George Washington.

You see, my grandfather was one of the most patriotic people around. When watching a ballgame on TV, he would stand during the national anthem. He would sing patriotic songs after a Manhattan cocktail or two. He read books on the history of the US.

This painting was a tremendous family heirloom. It was a priceless gift from my grandmother to my grandfather when he opened his business and was now the gift that my aunts gave me when my grandfather’s grandson opened his business. My aunts wanted to support me the same way my grandmother wanted to support my grandfather. I was floored.

So this simple portrait of the first president of the US has been hanging on the wall of my various offices ever since.

Many offices, many locations, but George still remains.

And the spirit of this gift will never leave me. Aunt Blanche and Aunt Gladys passed away quite a while ago, but I know they look down with huge smiles on their faces, knowing that the same George who watched over their dad watches over their nephew.

#throwbackthursday #bkrea #bobknakal

Become the expert.

I get calls every week from young brokers. They say, "Bob, I've been in the business two or three years. I'm competing with people who have been doing this for twenty. How do I compete?"

The assumption behind the question is that time in the business equals expertise. It does not.

Focus equals expertise.

Let me ask you a simple question. If you sell apartment buildings in your market, how many buildings are there? Not approximately. Exactly.

How many sold last year?
How many sold the year before?
What was the average price per square foot?
The average price per unit?
The average cap rate?

If you do not know the answers to these questions, someone else will. And that someone else becomes the expert.

Early in my career, we learned that knowing your territory was not optional. It was mandatory. Our entire system was built around becoming hyper focused experts in defined geographic areas . When you know every building, every owner, every sale, every zoning nuance, you walk into a meeting differently.

Confidence is born from preparation.

Imagine sitting across from an owner who is considering selling. Instead of speaking in generalities, you say:

"There are 312 buildings like yours in this market. Twelve sold last year. The average price per square foot was $487. The average cap rate was 5.6 percent. Based on your rent roll and location, here is exactly where you fit."

You think that owner is not impressed? You think the broker with twenty years of "experience" who cannot quote those numbers off the top of his head has the advantage?

Experience without focus is just time.
Specialization is a competitive weapon.

When you narrow your territory and master it, you compress decades of perceived experience into a few intense years of disciplined study and action.

Walk the streets. Count the buildings. Track every sale. Know the players. Understand the zoning. Study the trends.

Do this consistently and you will not feel like the young broker trying to compete with veterans. You will be the market expert.

And here is the secret: most people will not do the work. They will say they want to dominate their market, but they will not map it, measure it, and memorize it.

Opportunity lies in what others are unwilling to do.

If you want a competitive advantage, earn it.

This is "offspring" #36.

One of the things I am proudest of in my career has nothing to do with the number of buildings I've sold, the volume of transactions, or the awards I've been fortunate enough to receive. It's the people.

Today, there are officially 36 former Massey Knakal professionals who either own their own companies or lead major divisions of other firms. To me, that is the greatest measure of what we built together. Creating opportunities for people to grow, develop confidence, and ultimately become leaders themselves is a legacy that means more than any transaction ever could. That has always been my hope.

Meet George Brown.

George was with Massey Knakal from 2006 to 2008. Two years may not seem like a long time, but as is often the case, the length of time matters far less than what happens during it.

After George and his wife welcomed their first son, they decided it was time to move back home to East Tennessee to be closer to family. In 2008, he joined Wood Properties. Less than a decade later, he purchased the business, and in 2018 became an SVN franchisee. Today, he is leading the company and continuing to build on that success.

When George sent me this photo, he wrote something that really resonated with me:

"I was at MKRS from 2006 to 2008. Not that long, but the impact on me was huge. It all started at MKRS, something I'm quite proud of."

That is incredibly gratifying to hear.

The best leaders don't measure success by how many people work for them. They measure success by how many people they've helped become successful on their own.

Congratulations, George. Thank you for sending the photo, complete with the old Massey Knakal Realty Services book and, of course, the appropriately colored shirt.

I couldn't be happier for you and all you've accomplished.

Here's to Offspring #36... and hopefully many more to come.

"Bob, ChatGPT Loves You!"

This past week, I received calls from two property owners I had never met before. One assignment is a $15 million air-rights sale. The other is a $40 million development site.

Neither owner came through a referral. Neither came through a broker. Neither came through a traditional marketing channel.

They found me because of the content we have been creating and distributing. In fact, one of them said something that perfectly captured what is happening in the marketplace today:

"Bob, ChatGPT loves you."

That comment made me smile, but it also reinforced something I have been talking about for quite some time: the world of business development is changing dramatically. Relationships remain critically important and always will. However, before someone ever picks up the phone today, they often consult Google, social media platforms, AI engines, podcasts, videos, articles, interviews, and online content. The process of establishing credibility frequently begins long before the first conversation takes place.

Over the last two years, BKREA has invested heavily in content creation, market research, proprietary databases, articles, videos, podcasts, social media, SEO, and, more recently, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). We are not doing this to accumulate likes, followers, or vanity metrics. We are doing it because we understand that when a property owner asks, "Who is the best broker for a development site?" or "Who knows air rights?" or "Who specializes in vacant buildings?" Increasingly, the answers are being influenced by the digital footprint that professionals create over time.

Every article matters. Every podcast matters. Every interview matters. Every social media post matters. Every research report matters. Every video matters. Together, they become a body of work that tells the market who you are, what you know, and why someone should trust you.

What I find particularly fascinating is that neither of these owners knew me personally. Yet by the time they called, they felt like they knew me. They had consumed enough content to understand my experience, my track record, and my area of expertise. Much of the trust-building process had already occurred before the first phone call.

These two assignments represent deals number five and six that have come directly from owners who told me they asked AI who they should use. I believe that number is only going to grow. The firms and professionals who embrace content creation, personal branding, thought leadership, and AI visibility are positioning themselves for the future. Those who restrict these efforts may be missing one of the biggest business development opportunities of our time.

For decades, your business card told people who you were. Today, your digital footprint does. The question is no longer whether people can find information about you. The question is what they find when they look.

And increasingly, what they find determines whether the phone rings.

The recent Chicago Knakal Knetworking event was great fun.

It was an opportunity for me to see some old friends I hadn't seen in a while and make some new ones!

A special Thank You to my good friend, Simon Enwia, CCIM, who went above and beyond to make sure the event was a roaring success!! It is so interesting to me that regardless of geographic location, the issues we all face are the same. Discussing solutions, strategies and tactics with fellow real estate professionals is extraordinarily impactful and a great learning opportunity.

It was so great to chat with all of you who attended!! Thanks again Simon for all of the hard work!

The next Knakal Knetworking event is November 4 in Louisville. DM me or Raphael Collazo CCIM, Commercial Real Estate Advisor for more details.

#KnakalKnetworking #CCIM #SellingBuildings

We discussed time management in the Knakal Dealmakers Knetwork. Honestly, I think that phrase dramatically undersells what this really is.

This is not about calendars, apps, color coding, or productivity hacks. It is about intentionality. After 42 years in commercial real estate investment sales, I have become convinced that one of the biggest separators between average brokers and elite brokers is not intelligence, relationships, market knowledge, or even work ethic. It is control over time.

Most brokers spend their days reacting to emails, phone calls, problems, requests, and interruptions.

They start the day with no structure and then wonder why the most important things never seem to get done. The problem is that if you do not control your calendar, other people will. There is a massive difference between activity and value creation.

The highest-value activities in brokerage are usually the things most people procrastinate on because they do not feel urgent in the moment.

Prospecting, relationship building, research, preparation, learning markets, following up consistently, creating content, improving systems, and strategic thinking rarely scream for your immediate attention the way a ringing phone does. But over long periods of time, those activities are exactly what separate elite brokers from everybody else.

Great careers are not usually built in dramatic moments. They are built in disciplined, intentional blocks of time repeated consistently over many years.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that important things almost never happen accidentally. If something matters to you, you have to intentionally create time for it before the week even begins. That means blocking time and literally putting it on your calendar.

Not hoping it happens.
Scheduling it.

If you want to prospect consistently, block the time. If you want to work on a major initiative, block the time. If you want to create content, learn a market, build relationships, exercise, spend time with your family, or work on your business instead of simply surviving inside of it, you must reserve time for those things in advance or the week will consume you.

Build your to-do list over the weekend. Weekends are not only for recovery. They are also an opportunity to work ON your business instead of simply IN your business. Elite performers prepare ahead. They do not wake up Monday morning hoping to become productive. They already know what must get done and when.

A lot of people underestimate how much momentum comes from intentional planning. Your calendar ultimately becomes a reflection of your priorities. And your life ultimately becomes a collection of days you were intentional... or days you weren’t.

The brokers who dominate over long periods of time are usually not the ones with the most talent. They are the ones who consistently protect their time, focus on high-value activities, and execute with discipline year after year after year.

#KnakalKnugget