BKREA Chairman & CEO connects lessons from baseball to statistics, resilience, consistency, and the role of data in commercial real estate brokerage
-- BKREA today released the September 2026 edition of Crexi's Conversation with the Chairman, in which Crexi Senior Director Ashley Kobovitch interviews BKREA Chairman & CEO Bob Knakal. The eight-question interview explores the parallels between baseball and investment sales brokerage and how those lessons influenced Knakal's approach to the business throughout a career that began in 1984.
Knakal, a former college baseball player, explains that his love of the game began with its statistics and that he has applied the same scorekeeping mindset to real estate from his first day in the business. Over 42 years, he sold 2,425 buildings with an aggregate value of nearly $25 billion. In the interview, Knakal describes those statistics as a performance record he uses to evaluate what worked and where he can improve.
The interview also covers the origin of Knakal's business card, an oversized card designed after classic Topps baseball cards with his career statistics printed on the back. Knakal says the idea came from realizing that a longtime client hadn't known he'd changed firms, prompting him to create a card he believed people would be less likely to throw away. He has produced four versions, with the current edition modeled on the 1956 Topps landscape design. Knakal says that beyond being memorable, the card reflects his belief that professionals who claim expertise should be able to back it up with evidence.
A central theme of the conversation is how to handle failure. Knakal points out that a hitter who fails seven times out of ten can still be headed for the Hall of Fame and that brokers face a similar reality of unreturned calls, lost pitches, and deals that fall apart. The key, he argues, is treating each setback as one at-bat in a long season. "Yesterday's strikeout has nothing to do with today's at-bat," Knakal says.
On data, Knakal stresses that statistics are only meaningful with context, citing BKREA's Knakal Land Index, which analyzes thousands of Manhattan development site transactions against dozens of variables. While he is a strong advocate of AI and analytics, he cautions that models can't capture human factors, such as a multigenerational owner's priorities or a developer whose lender has pulled back. Knakal says brokers who pair data with judgment will be best positioned to succeed.
Another theme is consistency across a career that spanned the Savings & Loan Crisis, the dot-com crash, September 11, the Global Financial Crisis, COVID, and rising interest rates. Market conditions changed constantly, he notes, but the fundamentals of prospecting, knowing the market, telling clients the truth, and following up never did. For young brokers, he recommends tracking controllable activity like calls, meetings, and valuations rather than fixating on commissions, so that success becomes a repeatable process.
The interview closes with a discussion of how platforms like Crexi are changing the business by bringing listings, data, and market intelligence into one place. Knakal says this expands a broker's reach well beyond their personal network, allowing a New York property to be discovered by an investor anywhere in the country, and emphasizes that sellers don't need a hundred buyers, just the right one.
The full interview is available here: Crexi's Conversation with the Chairman - September 2026
About the company: BKREA is a Manhattan-focused commercial real estate investment sales and advisory firm led by Chairman and CEO Bob Knakal. The firm provides property owners, developers, and investors with investment sales, market intelligence, strategic positioning, and transaction execution backed by neighborhood expertise, proprietary research, and decades of New York City experience and proven results.
Contact Info:
Name: Taylor Bello
Email: Send Email
Organization: BKREA
Address: 135 W. 36th St., Fifth Floor New York, NY 10018
Phone: (212) 888-8850
Website: https://www.bkrea.com/
Release ID: 89204231
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