This morning at Massey Knakal’s 275 Madison Ave office, we snapped chairman Bob Knakal, who says NYC property sales are on pace to reach 5,286 transactions, which would beat his company’s forecast from the beginning of the year and set an all-time record. (Somebody wake up the Guinness people.) The first half of 2014’s pace has NYC on its way to $54.8B of deals, but that could go higher, considering the second half usually is more active, Bob says. The big variable is whether the mid-term election campaigns’ talking points (possibly tax reform, for instance) change the market’s direction.

Retail and development sites are the properties brokers are spending their time on, says Massey Knakal’s James Nelson, but their big frustration is that there’s not more multifamily to sell. Their favorite pool of sellers, longtime owners who are sitting on properties that could use some value-add, finally traded most of those properties during the capital gains tax-inspired flood of deals at the end of 2012.