For Marcianne Foster, a senior client services specialist at Colliers, placing bets on how much commercial properties would sell for in Ten-X's Battle of the Bids competition was just something fun to do.
But when Foster found out last week that she bested all other players to win the first round of Battle of the Bids, she said things got "pretty real." Her prize: $100,000 cash.
Foster credits her general "knowledge base" of real estate with helping her to win. Foster stuck, for the most part, to what she knows best, office and industrial properties, when she made her bets. She used CoStar data including market reports and sales comps and well as loan and debt information on properties before she placed her bets.
"I was totally surprised, totally surprised," Foster said in an interview.
Battle of the Bids is a six-round competition in which players place bets each round on the final sale prices of 10 properties to be auctioned on Ten-X, the online commercial real estate exchange owned by CoStar Group, publisher of CoStar News. Ten-X will give away prizes totaling up to $3 million, including a $1 million grand prize to the player who accumulates the most points across the six-round competition that Ten-X said is the biggest of its kind in commercial real estate.
The first-round auction closed late Thursday. Betting for the second round began Friday. That round ends Oct. 4.
Chris Zegal, head of marketing at Ten-X, said the competition had a 75% increase in the number of players who participated in the first round this year compared to last year.
In the first round, net leased retail and student housing properties proved to be popular with players. The property that attracted the most bets, 1,504, was a freestanding Starbucks location in Edinburgh, Indiana. A student housing complex positioned as a property offering good investment upside attracted the second-most bets at 1,270.
Foster, who grew up in Ringgold, Georgia, near Chattanooga, Tennessee, has worked at Colliers for more than four years and was at Cushman & Wakefield for 11 years before that. Foster said she has had her real estate license since 2008 and had been working "in one form of real estate for a number of years" before going full bore into commercial property brokerage.
With the first round won, Foster looks to keep playing with hopes of winning again.
"I’m going to play all six rounds — because honestly, it’s fun," she said. "Some of the others in the office were playing, and you know, it was just something fun to do. And to win a prize, that’s super exciting.
At Colliers in Tampa, Florida, Foster helps manage multiple transactions at a time. Given what she does for a living and knowing deals aren't done till the money is wired, she's waiting before she jumps up and down, she said.
"In commercial real estate you don’t celebrate till the deal actually closes," she said. "So I think once I actually have it in my hand, then that’s where I think it will be fully realized."
More information about Battle of the Bids and how to sign up can be found here.