From left: Ben Fox, Paul Massey, Chris Havens and Gabriel Bullaro

The announcement earlier this month from Massey Knakal Realty Services that it was entering
the retail leasing business brought not only a major new competitor
to New York City store rentals, but also introduced a novel
brokerage model to the notoriously fractured industry. The 22-year-old firm has grown to be one of the largest investment sales companies in the city
relying on a system that divides the New York metro area into nearly 50 geographic territories
and assigns a broker to each one. It is believed to be the only firm to use a territory system for
retail brokerage. [more]

From left: 205 Montague Avenue, Joseph Cayre, Paul Massey and David Schechtman

Joseph Cayre’s Midtown Equities has put the Downtown Brooklyn building that is home to brokerage Massey Knakal Realty Services on the market for $49 million, only six months after Cayre bought the building for $33 million. Brooklyn has seen a 21 percent increase in total investment sales in 2010, rising to $962.5 million, compared to a year earlier when it was $796.8 million, figures from Massey Knakal show. However, those figures are still far below the market’s peak in 2007 when $3.8 billion in properties traded hands in the borough. [more]

From left: Landon McGaw and Kobi Leifer

And then there was one.

The New Jersey office for investment sales firm Massey Knakal Realty Services is down to one salesperson from a peak of five following today’s resignation of the region’s managing director.

The news comes a day before Massey Knakal is set to announce that for the first time it has hired a retail leasing broker, and one week after one of the firm’s top producers, Shimon Shkury, departed with his entire team to form Ariel Property Advisors. In related news, two sources said Massey Knakal has hired a new retail leasing broker focusing on Manhattan. Company CEO Paul Massey would not comment on the new hire or identify the individual. [more]

Paul Massey, CEO of Massey Knakal Realty Services, has been named chairman of the board of directors at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, the Wall Street Journal reported. The museum, located in a landmarked tenement building at 108 Orchard Street, focuses on immigrants who settled in the city in the late 1800s and early 1900s and is currently planning a new education and visitor center across the street from its current home. Massey, who succeeds real estate investor Bruce Menin, will now take the reins in overseeing that project, which is scheduled to open in the spring of 2011. [WSJ]

205 Montague Street and Paul Massey

Commercial
real estate brokerage Massey Knakal Realty Services is looking to
sublet a portion of its Brooklyn headquarters at 205 Montague Street in
Brooklyn Heights. “We are 100 percent committed to having a growing
presence in the Brooklyn
market,” company CEO Paul Massey said in a statement. “Some interested
parties have made proposals to sublet a portion of our space and we are
exploring those possibilities.” The firm would not provide additional
details, and a Massey spokesperson said she did “not know which parties
have expressed interest” in the space. The brokerage also refused to
confirm or deny a Brownstoner report which claimed that Massey was
leaving the Brooklyn location entirely, since they were not using it to
its full capacity. “Massey Knakal has the best commercial agents in
Brooklyn and we are enjoying our significant market share,” Massey said
in his statement. In 2006, Massey signed a 10-year lease on the
18,750-square-foot Brooklyn space, the entire
third floor of the five-story Class A office property, which is owned
and managed by the Treeline Companies, according to allbusiness.com. TRD

[more]

Paul Massey

Investments sales in Manhattan for the first half of the year more than doubled in 2010
compared to the same period a year earlier, but still remained far
below the market’s peak in 2007, bro [more]

Paramount’s Paolo Zampolli (l) and Paul Massey of Massey Knakal

The Italian-born founder of model agency ID Model Management and a regular in the
Post’s Page Six column, Paolo Zampolli, filed suit in New York State
Supreme Court today claiming he was cheated out of more than $200,000
in commissions after he introduced a buyer for the property at 31 Bond
Street in Noho and was not listed as a broker on the sale. Zampolli, a licensed salesperson with Paramount Realty Group of
America, claims in the suit that he was the procuring broker that
brought his client, an Italian named Cristina Calori, to buy the
property at 31 Bond. The seller, a Japanese corporation called Heian
Bunka Center, which owns the six-story mixed-use building, was
represented by Massey Knakal Realty Services. Calori ended up going into contract on the property, with an asking
price of $8.5 million, but not listing Zampolli as the broker. The sale
is expected to close soon, the suit says. Zampolli, through Paramount, is suing Calori; her company Monster Real
Estate; Massy Knakal; and the Japanese firm Heian Bunka Center for a
total of $212,500, which represents half of a 5 percent commission, on
allegations including breach of contract and interfering with
contracts. Zampolli rejected the assessment by several brokers that he needed a
written contract with Calori — which he did not have — to prevail. “That is nonsense. [Brokers holding such a view] are amateurs. We will
have a judge rule on the legality of this case. That is why we went to
Supreme Court,” he said. [more]

Broker Timothy King (left) is suing Paul Massey’s firm Massey Knakal

A lawsuit filed last year by a minority partner of the Brooklyn office of Massey Knakal Realty Services was ordered to arbitration this week, in a move one independent observer called a victory for the commercial brokerage. Timothy King, a former COO with Massey Knakal, sued the brokerage in July 2008, alleging among other things that the company was poorly run, was lending money to itself improperly and made false statements on tax filings. But those allegations had a slim chance of holding up in court, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Carolyn Demarest said in her ruling issued Monday, and instead she sent the case, including charges, to arbitration. [more]

Broker Timothy King (left) is suing Paul Massey’s firm Massey Knakal

Despite a year passing since broker Timothy King filed a $3 million
lawsuit accusing his former partners Paul Massey and Robert Knakal of
Massey Knakal Realty Services of improper activities and mismanagement
of the firm, the two sides remain at loggerheads after a hearing in
Brooklyn court today. A judge in State Supreme Court rejected motions introduced by both
sides and left open the possibility that she would move the dispute to
arbitration. King filed suit June 2008 on behalf of Massey Knakal Realty of
Brooklyn, a partnership in which he holds a 10 percent interest.
Massey, CEO of Massey Knakal Realty Services, and Knakal, that
company’s chairman, are 50-50 partners in Massey Knakal Realty
Holdings, which owns 70 percent of the Brooklyn entity. King is not
suing the other five individuals who have a 20 percent stake in the
Brooklyn office. [more]

Left to right: Paul Massey, Woody Heller, James Kuhn

Manhattan investment sales brokers struggling to determine values for trophy office properties in a market lacking in comparable sales are looking at the stock prices of a local real estate investment trust for guidance. While brokers said the technique of using a stock price does not provide an exact value, it gives some indication as to what properties are worth. Other brokers discounted the idea, and some had not heard of it at all. SL Green is the best choice among the REITs because the majority of its portfolio is Manhattan office buildings, said Woody Heller, executive managing director at Studley. But using stock values to determine property values is at best a poor solution brokers resort to because of the thin amount of trading. Normally brokers look to comparable sales to determine capitalization rates, price per square foot and other metrics, but this year has yielded just one significant, arms-length office sale, at 1540 Broadway in Times Square. [more]