Our Inception: A Letter From Our Co-Founder, Rubin Isak

5 years ago today, on January 24, 2019, we incorporated Development Site Advisors, LLC. 9-months later, after endless hours preparing and surveying developers, attorneys, CRE brokers and owners, in September 2019 we officially launched.

In fact, the real birth of development site advisors? occurred on Thursday, December 6, 2018, when Lev came to me that morning and said, "We need to differentiate ourselves. All of us investment sales brokers are basically doing the same thing. We need to specialize, add real value, and be looked at as the go-to experts." We immediately made the decision to commit, came up with the name, and that night, we registered the domain https://lnkd.in/eXtkSuPv (We received our registered trademark 1 year later December 31, 2019)!

Many, many people thought we lost our minds! “You’re going to focus on the least traded and most complicated asset class in commercial real estate and become experts on zoning? You’re going to ONLY sell development sites?

Yep.

Over the last 4.5 years of operating, we have seen a Covid shutdown, stalled sites, lack of 421-a, Interest Rate chaos, etc, but we pay that no mind, persevere, and grow. And actually sell and gross more every single year since inception.

Why? How? We created a hyper-focused, niche commercial real estate brokerage where we only sell development sites and air rights utilizing a territory system we call our Neighborhood Focused Platform. No deviation. Specialization and Local Expertise. Because all we do is sell development sites, and our tagline is: We know zoning. We also have a zoning-focused team of in-house architects.

My co-founder and friend Lev Kimyagarov and I first met at Massey Knakal Realty Services in June 2006 (We both interviewed at their headquarters at 275 Madison Avenue, where Development Site Advisors is now headquartered)! The foundation of what we learned and who we learned from is invaluable.

After brokering billions of dollars of transactions, and being high-functioning jack-of-all-trades investment sales brokers, we decided to take a leap of faith and build a business never before seen in NYC: exclusive representation for owners of development sites with a local expert in every neighborhood.

Our agents never have to create a set-up, OM, underwrite a property, or do ANY back-office work. They are provided with Marketing, IT, HR, Analyst, and Zoning support and provided with our internally shared Developer Dashboard, with every developer who has ever built in NYC, along with detailed comps and data metrics. Every one of their exclusives has a detailed Due Diligence Accelerator Package created for it; so they can sell knowing their sellers and the buying community have all the information at their fingertips from day 1. We also publish a now highly sought-after Development Whitepaper, where we feature expert articles from our agents, as well as professionals in the real estate development industry.

According to CoStar, we are already a Top 5 real estate brokerage for land sales in NYC.

We are providing true advisory work to owners for the most complicated asset class. Dozens upon dozens of property owners have converted underutilized properties and air rights into positive management-free passive income, while always achieving the highest and best prices, thanks to our services.

I think we got something here.

If you are a real estate broker and want to bring us on with you to win development site business, think of us as your extension and use us as a resource.

We are also looking for agents with a passion for development sites, who want to specialize and set themselves apart from the tens of thousands of real estate brokers. For newer agents, we have an in-house training program called Development Site Academy; training is led by renowned commercial real estate trainer Wayne Naylor (he also trained all of us at Massey Knakal). Priceless.

Join us on our expansion journey together and let’s see where the next 5-years take us.

Together, we are climbing a mountain, and nobody climbs a mountain just to get to the middle. We’re climbing this mountain to get to the top, and it may take 5 years, 10 years, it may take 25 years, 50 years, but we will climb to the top. Our mountain is steep but defined: we want development site advisors? to be the most respected and sought-out development site brokerage in NYC and ultimately the Nation. That’s our mountain.