Robert Knakal

Robert Knakal, chairman of investment sales brokerage Massey Knakal, spells out in a recent interview how rising oil prices are affecting building sales in New York City:

Right now we are seeing, for the fi rst time since drilling began in the 1850’s, prices climbing for 7 consecutive years. When we are underwriting apartment buildings now, we can no longer rely on last year’s fuel bills to forecast next year fuel expense. We are underwriting using today’s price to account for the significant increases we have seen. Not too long ago fuel was $750 per unit and today it can be as much as $2,000 per unit.

The rest of the interview, done through the brokerage, can be found here (PDF). And my colleague Dana Rubinstein sat down with Mr. Knakal in June.

Robert Knakal, the chairman of investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal, wrote in his March "Message from the Chairman" that the volume of property and property-portfolio sales in New York will drop "approximately 20% in 2008."

Why?

"... 2007 will be remembered as the year we started to pay for the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long."  read more »

On Thursday morning, The Real Estate got a press release from Bob Knakal, the well-named half of Massey Knakal:

Please dispose of all the old headshots you have of our chairman, Robert Knakal, and use this one from here on out. We've seen his headshot from seven years ago pop up recently so please, use this one!

But before we say goodbye to the past, we wanted to run through his glorious aesthetic evolution, from the late 1990's through today.