The perfect view of New York Metropolis may simply be in a near-windowless convention room on the twelfth flooring of a Midtown Manhattan workplace constructing.
Splayed throughout 10 folding tables, a map pieced along with paper, tape and sticky notes particulars each block and parcel — 27,649 properties — in Manhattan beneath 96th Avenue on the East Aspect and one hundred and tenth Avenue on the West Aspect.
The map is the work of Bob Knakal, who created it by strolling each avenue and road throughout the desolate early months of the pandemic.
Up to date repeatedly, the tons are color-coded with highlighters and sticky notes to indicate that are on the market (inexperienced sticky notes), have been not too long ago offered (purple sticky notes), are owned by town (pink highlights) or are below development (inexperienced highlights). Orange highlights means lots is underutilized — and there’s a attainable deal to be made.
For 4 a long time, Mr. Knakal has used his obsession with information and inventive advertising and marketing methods to attain rarefied standing within the cutthroat world of New York Metropolis actual property. He’s extensively thought-about by trade professionals to be the highest business gross sales dealer by variety of transactions within the largest business market within the nation.
“It’s not likely the true property enterprise, it’s the data enterprise,” mentioned Mr. Knakal, 61, throughout a current tour of what he calls the Map Room, the place his cartographic creation lives.
Since 1984, when he first began in Manhattan, Mr. Knakal has offered 2,329 properties — workplaces, city properties, garages, condo buildings and warehouses — totaling $22 billion. His largest transaction was the almost $700 million sale in 2016 of a number of properties in Brooklyn owned by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, together with the Watchtower Constructing in Brooklyn Heights.
More and more, he has been concerned in main offers shaping New York’s skyline, together with the 2014 sale of a parking zone on Manhattan’s West Aspect for $238 million that’s now the Spiral workplace tower, one of many tallest buildings within the metropolis.
The gross sales haven’t solely generated vital wealth for Mr. Knakal, however have additionally given him entry to elected officers.
The town, and particularly Manhattan, has turn into increasingly more unaffordable for odd individuals, a message Mr. Knakal has emphasised to lawmakers.
He says he cares about reasonably priced housing as a result of creating extra of it’s important to town’s future, although he additionally acknowledges that extra offers for properties and growth may benefit himself.
Over a non-public lunch in Midtown, he urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to do extra to encourage the conversions of workplace buildings into housing. He additionally not too long ago bent the ear of Mayor Eric Adams.
The town, he informed the mayor, owns quite a few properties which might be underutilized and could possibly be redeveloped. He particularly known as out public housing developments, which he says could possibly be preserved whereas developing new reasonably priced and personal housing close by on the identical tons.
“You have a look at these big tracts of land that public housing sits on the place a thousand individuals stay that produces zero taxes,” he mentioned. “There’s alternative to have 10,000 individuals stay on that land, have a part of or not it’s tax-generating and create tens of 1000’s of jobs with out displacing anyone.”
Some progressive lawmakers and lecturers blame the affordability disaster on builders and brokers like Mr. Knakal, whose purpose is to safe the very best bid for property house owners. They argue that ever-increasing gross sales costs encourage traders to develop tasks that may generate bigger earnings, typically leading to extra luxurious condominiums.
“A job of the dealer is to encompass your self with individuals in energy to get your self higher offers, so the nearer you get to the circle of energy and cash, the higher offers you possibly can dealer and cash you may make,” mentioned Miguel Robles-Duran, an affiliate professor of urbanism on the New Faculty’s Parsons Faculty of Design.
State Senator Jabari Brisport, a democratic socialist from Brooklyn, mentioned that Mr. Knakal mustn’t have a say within the creation of reasonably priced housing.
“He’s an instance of the whole lot that’s unsuitable with our housing disaster proper now, which is that we have now allowed housing to be handled as an funding, as a monetary commodity, as an alternative of a assured proper,” Mr. Brisport mentioned.
“It is a one that has gotten very rich off the backs of New Yorkers in search of a spot to stay,” Mr. Brisport mentioned, including that Mr. Knakal has used his earnings “to purchase political favors from the wealthy and highly effective.”
Mr. Knakal mentioned in response that insurance policies applied by New York lawmakers lately have considerably stalled the development of latest residences and worsened the housing disaster. They’ve additionally made builders really feel below assault, main them to begin investing elsewhere, like within the South.
“There’s a very large philosophical distinction if you happen to imagine housing is an entitlement than if you happen to assume housing is a enterprise,” Mr. Knakal mentioned. “That’s method past the scope of an actual property dealer to determine, however I don’t assume anybody can argue in opposition to that if you happen to added extra provide, rents can be extra reasonably priced for individuals.”
Mr. Knakal begins each Monday with a authorized pad that includes a handwritten record of a number of dozen property house owners to name. It’s a mixture of present purchasers making an attempt to promote, property house owners who aren’t but prepared and previous purchasers; some are cold-calls.
He makes the calls himself, and follows up with emails till he will get the house owners on the cellphone.
In a metropolis swarming with brokers, the calls hold his identify prime of thoughts, Mr. Knakal mentioned. He stresses to potential purchasers his lengthy historical past of solely representing sellers, saying that it exhibits his loyalty.
“Rent me, I’ve acquired your again, I’m in your nook as a result of I’ve seen all of it, executed all of it, and I can defend you,” Mr. Knakal mentioned, describing his pitch. “That’s one thing that other people can’t say as a result of they don’t have that very same observe report.”
That decided technique is how he landed the true property mogul Harry B. Macklowe.
Mr. Knakal cold-called Mr. Macklowe for greater than two years a few one-story retail constructing earlier than he lastly acquired Mr. Macklowe to reply, ringing him late one evening in hopes of circumventing his assistant.
It was the beginning of a long-running enterprise relationship that has to date resulted in additional than $350 million in gross sales, together with that first property, on East sixtieth Avenue. Mr. Macklowe ultimately employed him to promote it — almost twenty years after their first cellphone name — in 2005 for $11.75 million. The constructing was redeveloped into 42 affordable-housing items.
At his workplaces, Mr. Knakal is surrounded by numbers on printed spreadsheets, in hard-bound books detailing his offers, and on his pc. He tracks virtually the whole lot and rattles off statistics like he’s studying the again of a baseball card.
In truth, his outsized enterprise card resembles a baseball card, with a photograph of him holding a baseball glove on the entrance and his annual gross sales numbers on the again.
He even tracks his personal efficiency.
In what share of calls to former purchasers does he hear about one other property proprietor who may be out there to promote? 9 p.c.
What share of potential purchasers rent him after a pitch assembly? About 26 p.c.
What share of potential purchasers who’ve visited the Map Room for the pitch assembly rent him? A hundred percent.
Through the years, he mentioned, his gross sales figures have mirrored the peaks and valleys of the financial system. Property gross sales have declined not too long ago, however not as a lot as they did throughout the financial savings and mortgage disaster of the early Nineteen Nineties.
Within the first 12 months of the pandemic, Mr. Knakal offered simply seven properties, his lowest in three a long time. Whereas gross sales improved in 2022, they’ve declined since then, pushed by a steep and regular drop-off in main offers over $10 million throughout town.
Rising rates of interest have contributed to a decline in constructing values, he mentioned, spooking house owners into holding onto properties.
Mr. Knakal mentioned most house owners promoting right this moment haven’t any selection, pushed to promote due to divorce, disputes or loss of life.
“When you might have the circumstance the place one thing exerts downward stress on worth, individuals don’t promote,” he mentioned. “The fourth quarter numbers are going to be horrible.”
Throughout the week, Mr. Knakal splits his time between his workplace on the Madison Avenue headquarters of JLL, the true property agency the place he works, and one other constructing in Midtown the place he leased area only for his map.
Mr. Knakal continuously provides excursions of the Map Room and infrequently refers back to the map when builders name, generally utilizing a magnifying glass to zero in on a neighborhood.
On a current morning, he guided two executives from Rockefeller Group, an actual property agency, who have been in search of a housing alternative in Manhattan.
They scanned the map for potential websites. There’s nothing on the market on the Higher West Aspect, Mr. Knakal remarked. Reaching over Central Park with a telescopic pointer, he indicated the shortage of inexperienced sticky notes in that neighborhood.
Pulling the pointer again towards himself, he directed the builders to a number of obtainable properties on the Higher East Aspect and in Decrease Manhattan. None have been the suitable match in the mean time — both too small or too costly, they informed him.
One of many builders, Meg Brod, a senior managing director at Rockefeller Group, mentioned that different business brokers may say what was on the market within the metropolis. However none may match Mr. Knakal’s perception and data about developments, neighborhoods and alternatives.
“You wish to work with a dealer who’s on the bleeding fringe of what’s coming to the market,” Ms. Brod mentioned. “We wish to be one of many first to listen to about it.”
Round 6 p.m., Mr. Knakal often attends an occasion or get-together, a part of his purpose of attending 261 networking capabilities annually, one for each workday. He not often declines a proposal to talk at conferences or seem on a podcast, regardless of how small the viewers.
Previously 12 months, he has embraced one other sort of networking. He employed a social media supervisor to show him the best way to put up on LinkedIn and X, and has shortly gained a big following by sharing tales about previous offers and poking enjoyable at himself.
He has no plans to decelerate or retire anytime quickly. “I don’t run out of power,” he mentioned.
