Presently a Platinum Award Winning Associate Real Estate Broker at Douglas Elliman in Queens and Long Island my journey began in Russia, in the most loving and giving home of a family living in Tashkent. I was the first child and my parents loved me unconditionally. Every weekend we went amusement parks, and spent time with my parents and created a lot of wonderful childhood memories. Both of my parents always encouraged me, supported me and helped me to achieve the highest grades. They always believed that I had the potential to be a leader, they encouraged me to speak in the opening school ceremony on September 1st.
I met my husband when I was young and we fell in love and we married before we left the USSR. After I was married the Soviet Union started to fall apart and my family began to make plans to immigrate to New York. We immigrated to New York on May 10th, 1993. Like all immigrants we came here with nothing and needed to start from the bottom. Immigrating to the US and being pregnant with my first child was not easy. It was a new country, new language, new environment, new culture, and completely new world. It was a big adjustment for my family but we decided to stick together, rented an apartment and support one another to grow in this beautiful country.
In December of 1993 I had my first born son David. Six months later again my parents took the lead and gave me the opportunity to go to college while they took care of my son. I went to college, after that I worked for a Nationwide insurance company broker. Some days in the evenings I continued to go to private school and take computer programming classes.
In July of 2000 I had my second son Gabriel, few months later a good friend found me a job at Credit Suisse in the accounts payable department. After purchasing my first house I was laid off from Credit Suisse. My husband and I mutually decided that we want to start our careers in the real estate while he remained at his full time job. I worked at Century 21 real estate with my husband until 2007. It was a moment when we both felt we can become independent and start our own business. We decided to join forces with outside partners that were related to the industry, quickly we realized that our visions didn’t align. The partnership was dissolved. I started looking for new opportunities and I wanted to be a part of a luxury brand with a great reputation. In 2008 we joined Douglas Elliman that allowed us to take our business to the next level.
Very shortly after September 2012 I was hit with devastating news that my father was diagnosed with an incurable cancer. I was living in denial until July 2013, I was hoping it was all a bad dream that would end. Unfortunately in July of 2013 my father lost his battle to esophageal cancer and passed on. I had to really rise up to the challenge and take the lead as the oldest daughter and lead the family through this tough time. This event in my life led me to specialize in estates and probates. It’s a process when people lose their loved ones and need help preparing their home for sale by cleaning the house and staging it. I partner with top-quality, hand-picked, fully-licensed and insured third-party companies that handle it all, from complete cleanouts to organizing donations, providing dumpsters, holding tag sales, landscaping, disposing of old cars, overseeing contractors, and much more.
I lead a team of people “The Zakinova Team” we work together to give our clients the exceptional service. We are dedicated to helping clients achieve their goals in each successful transaction. In fact large percentage of our business comes from repeat and referral clients. Presently I am dually licensed in Bayside and Roslyn offices and proud to specialize in selling all throughout Queens as well as Long Island. My focus is to help my clients in all things real estate from New York to Florida.