Branch Properties' Jared Joella wanted to just finish somewhere near the top in a round of Ten-X's Battle of the Bids competition. So when he won the top prize in the sixth and final round thanks to his final wagers on commercial real estate sales, he was in disbelief.
"I was (and frankly still am) absolutely in shock that I won the $100,000 prize!" Joella, vice president of acquisitions at Atlanta-based Branch, said in an email. "I’ve come into every round hoping to make it into the Top 31, but never did I think I actually had a chance at being #1 in any round."
In Battle of the Bids, 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, the publisher of CoStar News. Ten-X is giving away prizes totaling up to $3 million, including the $1 million grand prize to the player who accumulates the most points in the six-round competition that Ten-X said is the biggest of its kind in commercial real estate.
The final round of the second season of Battle of the Bids ended last week, and Ten-X said it expects to announce the winner of the $1 million prize next week. Mike King, a Kidder Mathews investment sales broker in Seattle, won the first season of Battle of the Bids last year and took home that $1 million prize.
When it comes to rankings by firm, Colliers is in the lead. Through the six rounds, the roughly 275 Colliers' brokers and professionals who played won a total of $290,000, far outpacing rival firms. Two Colliers players have won rounds and $100,000 apiece, accounting for more than 69% of the brokerage's total winnings. Marcianne Foster, a senior client services specialist at Colliers in Tampa, Florida, won the first round, and Josh Randolph, an investment sales broker in Colliers' Birmingham, Alabama, office, won the fourth round.
Seattle-based brokerage Kidder Mathews ranks as the No. 2 firm with its players having won a total of $136,000. Branch Properties, fueled by Joella's win in round six, came in at third with its players having won a total of $131,000 in the competition.
Joella said he credits his success in the sixth round to a switch in strategy after playing in the early rounds of Battle of the Bids.
"I think the key to my success in this round was really focusing on what properties I thought would actually sell," he said. "In the first round of the season, I actually made really accurate bets, but I didn’t make the Top 31 because only 4 of my 10 properties sold. In this round, 8 of my 10 properties sold, and I secured points on each one of them."
Joella, who joined Branch in 2015 after working at Prudential Mortgage Capital Co. for five years, said he got into commercial real estate because he had an interest in finance. However, he initially thought about doing something else in the industry.
"I always loved buildings growing up … particularly skyscrapers," he said. "I wanted to be an architect for a long time and really have an impact on the skyline of a city. Only later did I learn that I was not very artistically inclined and frankly didn’t have the engineering knowledge to become an architect."
As for his prize money, Joella knows what he wants to do with it.
"My parents have never been to Europe before, so I’m planning on taking them to England and Scotland in the spring," he said. "I also plan to make a few charitable donations, and then I intend to save the rest to go toward an eventual down payment on a house."