Episode 53. Bob Knakal, Chairman & CEO at BK Real Estate Advisors

Bob Knakal is a sales broker selling investment properties in New York City since 1984. It is generally accepted that Bob has brokered the sale of more properties (2,300) in New York City than any individual broker ever.

Bob was Chairman and Founding Partner of Massey Knakal Realty Services, New York’s #1 building sales firm. He started his real estate career in 1984 at CB Richard Ellis where he met Paul J. Massey Jr. They both left CB in 1988 to form Massey Knakal.

From 1988 through 2014, Massey Knakal closed over 6,000 transactions with an aggregate value in excess of $23 billion.

To date, Bob has been personally responsible for the sale of over 2,252 buildings (generally considered to be the highest total ever for a single broker in New York) and over $21 billion in sales.

On December 31, 2014, Cushman & Wakefield acquired Massey Knakal. At Cushman & Wakefield, Bob acted as Chairman of New York Investment Sales. He was ranked the top originating investment sales broker at Cushman & Wakefield in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Since 2009, Bob has written a weekly column on the New York City Real Estate Market called Concrete Thoughts for the Commercial Observer.

Bob graduated from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1984.

In 1999, at the age of 36, Bob was named to Crain’s New York Business’s Forty Under Forty/New York Rising Stars list for his outstanding achievement in the New York City business community. He is a two-time winner of the Real Estate Board of New York’s Robert T. Lawrence Award in the Most Ingenious Deal of the Year contest.