Our Founder

Peter Magistro, the President and Founder of Bronx Pro, was born and raised in the Westchester Square and Throggs Neck neighborhoods of the Bronx.  Peter began his real estate career in 1972 buying properties in the Bronx and Long Island while pursuing a career at Citibank.  After attaining the title of Vice President at Citibank, Peter decided to pursue real estate full time and in 1988 he established Bronx Pro Real Estate Management Inc. It was Peter’s commitment to helping others that brought him to community development in 1998 with a vision to provide safe, high quality, and affordable housing to New Yorkers. “With God’s love, all things are possible” is Bronx Pro Group’s aspiration and it comes from Peter’s lifetime of service to his community and creating housing and financial opportunities for Bronx residents. 

Peter did not follow a traditional pathway to find his calling as a socially minded entrepreneur. At the age of 16, Peter left school to begin working at a Manhattan jewelry company. Afterwards he worked for his father, Anthony Magistro, learning basic carpentry trades in the renovation business. It was this experience and his father’s prodding that propelled him to seek an office job in banking as a junior clerk with Citibank, where he was later recruited to the accounting department, to supervise Accounting Investigations. It was Peter’s passion for Business Metrics, Accounting and Real Estate that advanced him to work as a Financial Controller for Citibank's owned properties and later as a Real Estate Loan Underwriter.

During his time at Citibank, Peter also revisited his education. Attending classes in the evening and on weekends, he soon acquired his Associates degree in Banking from the American Institute of Banking and then went on to attain both bachelor’s and MBA degrees from Fordham University. 

Peter’s banking career culminated with him taking charge of Real Estate Management and Design for the Lower Manhattan Division, where he gained expertise in construction, architecture, and managing properties in the heart of the city. By the age of 30, he achieved the title of Vice President at the bank, while he also privately acquired his own multifamily properties in the Bronx. It was shortly after this time, in 1982, Peter decided to move on from banking to manage his private holdings, which became the property management portfolio for Bronx Pro Real Estate Management, established in 1988. The freedom of managing his own interest allowed Peter to spend time with his wife Margaret Ashe Magistro and to raise their three children during their early formative years.

Following the many years of challenging property management throughout the 1970s,1980s, and 1990s, Peter was ready to make another important transition. In 1998, HPD selected Bronx Pro for its Neighborhood Entrepreneur Program (NEP). The program transferred City-owned buildings to private, neighborhood-based property managers for development into low and moderate-income housing. This began Bronx Pro’s affordable housing work and broadening commitment to community development. Under Peter’s stewardship, Bronx Pro built and managed affordable housing through various NYC/NYS programs, implemented financial metric controls, instilled the company’s strong commitment to sustainability and most importantly, established the company ethic to put our residents’ care in the forefront of our business decision making. Peter also created a tradition of annual turkey giving to all residents that continues and grows with Bronx Pro today.

Today, Peter currently acts as advisor to Bronx Pro, oversees construction affiliate Home Builders 1, and is a philanthropist. Beyond all this, Peter looks forward to working on initiatives to fight food insecurity and revisiting his passion to feed people in need, which was developed during his time volunteering as the supervising chef of the Bread and More Soup Kitchen in 1990s.