For those of you who know me or have read any of my blog posts in the past, you’ll notice my fiancé and I are avid foodies and spend most of our leisure time traveling and experiencing the best chic and well-hidden food concepts. My personal love for the hospitality industry helps to explain the gravitational pull restaurant leasing and sales has had on my business. As a resident of Staten Island’s North Shore, I’ve been especially excited and bullish on the development and culinary boom of the area. Yet, I still believe both Stapleton and Saint George to be the two most undervalued neighborhoods in New York City. Here are some of the restaurants to look forward to coming to the North Shore in the upcoming months. 

Flour + Oak - The newest restaurant…

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The Staten Island Real Estate Market is an extremely competitive one, after all, we are a suburb of New York City. New York City real estate is some of the most sought after real estate in the entire world. 

I am constantly collaborating with my All-Star line up of real estate agents to develop innovative ways to improve the customer experience.  Over the years we have taken great pride in staying ahead of this incredibly competitive market.  Being named one of New York City’s top 10 boutique real estate firms by the Commercial Observer was one of our proudest moments as a company.  

 

IDENTIFYING MISSED SALES OPPORTUNITIES

 

When marketing your property, be it a house for sale, commercial building for sale or retail storefront for lease,…

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Whether you’re a first-time homebuyer or you’ve been around the block a few times with purchasing a home, there are some questions that people always ask throughout the process. Before fully diving into a search, one of the first questions to always emerge is...

  1.      How much can I afford?

For first time homebuyers, it’s really easy to pull a number out of the sky thinking that’s what you’ll be able to afford. Either that or you plug your figures into a website that spits the information right out to you. If you’re moving onto your second home or beyond, it is super important to re-evaluate your finances and the market to understand what will work for you this time around. Either way, before indulging in the full house-hunting experience, it…

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Millennials who are absolutely killing it find shoe-box studios on the upper west side in Manhattan, or decide to share a loft in Dumbo or Williamsburg. They enjoy the city life, replete with clubs and live music and a cornucopia of choices for good late night grub.

They’re wise to go after what they want. I imagine they’re also happy to have gotten it. They have a relative proximity to the big city, to Broadway, to the place where Sinatra said “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” Possibly more relevant, they’re “where concrete jungles are made of,” as Jay Z and Rhinna dubbed it. But, have they really left the dorms? Sharing a tiny, paltry apartment in a hip neighborhood is cool. Maybe? Is it foolish? Definitely.

Believe it or not, the big…

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Casandra Properties is thrilled to announce in the Commercial Observer the latest lease we successfully negotiated at Empire Outlets, Levi Strauss & Company. “We are thrilled Levi’s, a concept new to the Staten Island market, will now have the opportunity to sell its product to masses of tourists and residents as diverse and rich in culture and history as the Levi’s brand”, said James Prendamano.

Levi’s joins retail giants such as H&M, Gap, Banana Republic, Nordstrom Rack and Brooks Brothers among many others. Casandra Properties has served as the exclusive leasing broker for the 340,000-square foot center adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, the second busiest ferry terminal in the country featuring 24.1 million trips per year via the 2300…

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I am thrilled to announce we went live with a comprehensive website www.casandraproperties.com – the online resource for all Staten Island Real Estate.

Whether you're searching for Staten Island homes for sale, Staten Island commercial real estate for sale or Staten Island retail for lease, www.casandraproperties.com will be your one-stop source for all up-to-date Staten Island listings and information. In addition to the site, we jointly launched a new comprehensive Customer Relationship Management software to serve our clients with cutting-edge technology.

While it would be impossible to list all the new features, I thought it may be helpful to describe how some of these new tools will help buyers, sellers, landlords, and tenants make more…

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Casandra Properties Makes History 

It is a pleasure to announce that we have brokered a $41 million deal in Staten Island, New York- one of the largest investment-sales deals in the borough’s history.

Managing director, James Prendamano, led a team of three listing agents, Brian McGowan, Celia Iervasi and Robert Nixon, in this groundbreaking achievement.

South Shore Commons is a 140,000 square-foot retail center located at 2955 Veterans Road West. This spacious property is built of 6 buildings and 34 stores and sits at the tail of the Outer Bridge Crossing.

We are excited to continue our relationship with the purchasing developers, Murray and Dave Berman, to “optimize the center’s performance and tenant mix in the years to come,” as Mr. Prendamano mentioned in yesterday’s The…

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James Pendamano

This month The Real Deal ran a story about how the work Casandra Properties has done over the years is shaping the way people view Staten Island. High profile projects such as Empire Outlets and Urby Staten Island are attracting positive attention from developers, investors and visitors who have never been to Staten Island.

The article provides historical context about how Casandra Zappala launched the company as a boutique firm in 1989 when commercial real estate was “a man’s world”. But because she knew Staten Island well, she soon found success in attracting national retailers to the Island. As she says, ““They knew I knew what I was doing.  It was that simple.”

James Prendamano,  Managing Director of the firm explained why national retailers…

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By Brian McGowan

Hipsters ShoppingWe prefer bikes to cars. We prefer vertical living to single family homes with sprawling lawns. We use the internet to compare pricing but prefer to touch and feel the item before they purchase it. We prefer authenticity to mass production – and – we want to know that the person they are spending their money with cares about their community, the environment and humanity as a whole. We are millennials and we are the largest, living generation on planet Earth.

Standard & Poor’s U.S. chief economist, Ann Bovino notes that there are 80 million millennials spending $600 billion dollars annually. In just three years, millennials will average $1.4 trillion in spending accounting for 30% of total retail sales.

So, how will this…

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By Brian McGowan

Staten Island is New York City’s smallest borough and often the focus of urban jokes. Due to its history as a farm community and vacation hot spot for New York City’s super wealthy, residents were presumed “unsophisticated”, “clannish” and “insulated” from the culture and diversity of the greater metropolis.

Anyone who still holds that opinion of Staten Island hasn’t taken a look lately.

Staten Island is home to nearly 500,000 people, 53% of which over the age of 24 have a college education. Staten Island boasts one of the highest median family incomes in New York City at $117,068 and we generate $1.2 billion dollars annually in unmet retail demand.

With respect to diversity, Staten Island’s population has changed rapidly…

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