The decision to sell a development site in New York City is among the most consequential financial decisions a property owner will ever make. Unlike other business decisions, there are no second chances. A development site sale is a one-time event, and the difference between an average execution and an exceptional one can translate into millions—or even tens of millions—of dollars in value.
In a market defined by complexity, regulation, capital flows, and timing, the selection of a brokerage firm is not a commodity choice. It is a strategic decision that directly impacts pricing, deal structure, buyer selection, and execution certainty.
This paper outlines why BKREA provides a fundamentally different—and demonstrably superior—approach to selling development sites, and why that difference translates into better outcomes for sellers.
At the heart of every successful transaction is alignment. The interests of the advisor must be directly and exclusively tied to the interests of the client.
BKREA is built on a simple but powerful model:
This structure eliminates competing priorities and ensures that every recommendation, every strategy, and every action is directed toward one objective: MAXIMIZING VALUE FOR THE SELLER.
By contrast, most large brokerage firms operate diversified business models that include mortgage brokerage, equity placement, leasing, and property management. While these services may be valuable in isolation, they introduce structural conflicts when layered into an investment sales assignment. When a firm stands to earn significantly more from downstream services than from the sale itself, incentives can shift. Buyer selection may be influenced by future fee opportunities. Pricing strategy may be shaped by transaction certainty rather than value maximization.
Exposure may be limited to preferred counterparties.
BKREA eliminates these conflicts entirely. Our success is directly tied to the price you achieve.
In a market as nuanced as New York City, specialization is not a luxury—it is a requirement. BKREA is not a generalist brokerage firm. We are not dividing our time between office buildings, retail assets, multifamily properties, and hotels. We are not allocating attention across multiple service lines. We are focused—intensely and exclusively—on development and redevelopment opportunities.
This matters for several reasons:
Other firms may “do” development site sales. BKREA lives in that world full-time. The difference between a full-time specialist and a part-time participant is not incremental—it is exponential.
Selling a development site is not simply a marketing exercise. It is a multidisciplinary process that requires expertise across zoning, design, policy, finance, and tax strategy. To address these issues most effectively, BKREA has built a first-of-its-kind, in-house BKREA Policy & Zoning SWAT Team to address this complexity.
This team includes:
Together, they provide a comprehensive analysis of your development site that goes far beyond traditional brokerage.
Before your site is brought to market, we:
Equally important, this analysis is shared with prospective buyers, giving them greater confidence in the opportunity and reducing perceived risk. Lower perceived risk translates directly into more aggressive pricing. This strategy has worked successfully for dozens of our clients who wanted to maximize their sales prices.
In development site sales, information is not just power—it is pricing. BKREA has invested heavily in building the most comprehensive, proprietary datasets in the New York City land market.
At the center of this effort is The Knakal Map Room— a resource that houses a 24-foot by 10-foot Sanborn map that reflects:
This resource was built through direct, block-by-block fieldwork across Manhattan, combined with thousands of hours of research. It is continuously updated to reflect real-time market conditions.
Understanding supply is critical to understanding value.
BKREA maintains a fully disaggregated development pipeline, categorized into:
Each category is tracked down to the square foot and updated weekly, with projects classified as:
This level of granularity allows us to:
BKREA has also assembled the most comprehensive databases of development site sales ever created, analyzing over 2,489 transactions dating back to 1984.
This dataset enables:
We are not relying on anecdotal evidence or limited comps. We are leveraging decades of structured data.
The highest price is achieved not through negotiation alone, but through competition. BKREA’s marketing approach is designed to ensure that your development site is exposed to the ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF QUALIFIED BUYERS.
Our Reach Includes:
We maintain real-time relationships with these groups because we interact with them daily—not occasionally.
Many brokerage firms limit exposure, either intentionally or structurally, to a subset of “preferred” buyers.
BKREA does the opposite.
We are COMPLETELY AGNOSTIC as to who the buyer is. Our objective is to:
A broader, more competitive process produces better outcomes—consistently.
Over the course of thousands of transactions, patterns emerge.
Buyers employ a wide range of strategies to gain advantage:
Because BKREA has seen these tactics repeatedly, we are uniquely positioned to:
This experience is not theoretical—it is built on decades of real-world execution. Our track record includes hundreds of development site sales aggregating to over 30 million buildable square feet and over $9 billion in sales volume.
Strategy and data are critical, but execution ultimately determines outcome.
At BKREA, execution is defined by:
Our team operates with an intensity that reflects the importance of the assignment.
This is not a transactional business for us. Each assignment is a reflection of our reputation and our model.
When viewed collectively, BKREA’s approach represents a fundamentally different model:
Each of these elements contributes to a single outcome: MAXIMIZING VALUE FOR YOUR DEVELOPMENT SITE.
Selling a development site is not just a transaction—it is a strategic event that crystallizes years, and often decades, of ownership.
The difference between an average outcome and an exceptional one is rarely accidental. It is the result of:
BKREA was built to deliver all four.
We believe that when sellers are fully informed, fully supported, and fully represented without conflict, they achieve better results. Our entire platform is designed around that belief.
If you are considering the sale of your development site, the question is not simply who can list the property.
The question is: WHO IS BEST EQUIPPED TO MAXIMIZE ITS VALUE?
We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that the answer is BKREA.
Bob Knakal has been a broker in NYC since 1984. Over that time, he has brokered the sale of over 2,402buildings having a market value of approximately $24.2 billion. The 2,402 properties sold Is generally considered to be the highest total for any individual broker in the history of the United States.
For 26 years of those years (1988-2014), he owned and ran Massey Knakal Realty Services which sold more than 3x the number of properties as the #2 firm in NYC from 2001-2014. Running the firm with a Servant Leadership management style, focusing on empowering everyone on the team, intensely training them and building their self-esteem, led to this overwhelmingly dominant platform. The firm was sold to Cushman & Wakefield in 2014 for $100 million.
The Massey Knakal Legacy is illustrated by the fact that today in the New York City investment sales market, there are 35 companies, or divisions of companies, that are either owned by, or run by, folks who learned the business at Massey Knakal.
Bob is a prominent thought leader in the commercial real estate business, frequently writing about the market, lecturing on the market, and appearing on podcasts and national television shows on networks like Fox, CNBC and MSNBC.
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