NEW YORK CITY—After a successful leasing career on his own, Jeffrey Nissani last year became an investment sales broker when he joined Marcus & Millichap. Now a prolific seller of office and retail condominiums, the broker who has another career as a nightlife owner, sat down EXCLUSIVELY with GlobeSt.com to talk about his career and the state of the market.

GlobeSt.com: Why did you make the shift to investment sales?

Jeff Nissani: It was sort of a natural progression. I was doing retail and office leasing so much so I developed relationships and clients were saying, 'we've done so many deals, we trust you, why aren't you brining us buildings to buy?' But doing that is much more difficult when you're out on your own, in terms of gaining access to good inventory while Marcus & Millichap focuses on sellers exclusively.

GlobeSt.com: What sort of trends are you seeing in the market?

Nissani: The office and retail condo market has gone through the roof. There's so little inventory, even at astronomical prices. I just went into contract on three condos, of both types, and they all traded at record prices and the market came up to meet the pricing. There was a negotiation but the taking was significantly higher than the seller—or I—expected, and it was higher than the market value.

In the office and retail condo market, a lot of professional investors aren't the ones scooping these things up, it's primarily users and they'll typically pay more than an investor, especially on the retail side. The insane pricing in retail leasing has created this whole surge of users buying retail condos for ultra-high prices, pushing professional investors out of the market. On those three properties I mentioned, multiple investors came in and nothing came remotely close to what users were will to paying. Many of them are mom and pop entities but to them, this is worth the price of not having to ever deal with getting kicked out of the space.

GlobeSt.com: You own some restaurants and nightclubs. Does that help your clients?

Nissani: It's a huge benefit. Having a background as an operator, I can speak the same language as a tenant coming in, I can look at a property relative to what they do, I can understand their margins and I can do a financial analysis that I believe a lot of other brokers can't do. Tenants have said I was able to shed more light on why a specific property makes sense for their business, instead of just saying something is a good deal from a real estate perspective.

GlobeSt.com: You're also an industry technology buff. How do the tools out there change how you do business?

Nissani: It's changed everything about the business. For brokers, everything is about information and how quickly you can get it. Now, if you're not a broker who's equipped, from a tech standpoint, you're last to market. Also, your reach is expanded. On the investment sales side now, there are foreign investors and you don't reach them with old school methods, there are syndications, advertising and the Internet. You can't do business the same way you were doing it 10 years ago.

GlobeSt.com: Where do you see industry technology going?

Nissani: Relative to research, I sometimes go to seven to eight sites to look up different aspects of a property; it can take two hours. No one has cornered the market to connect them all so you can go to one place and we're always focused on finding tools that will cut your time.