For Kyle Camilliere, who holds the pole position in Ten-X's Battle of the Bids real estate competition, the final round focus will be trying to maintain his points lead and fend off competitors as he works to win the $1 million grand prize.
Camilliere, a senior acquisitions analyst at Red Bank, New Jersey-based First National Realty Partners, said he's ready as round five comes to an end Wednesday and the final round kicks off Friday.
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 awards prizes totaling up to $3 million, including a $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.
Camilliere now holds the No. 1 position among players with 13,100 points for the season. With 12,900 points, Kevin Buxton of Buxton Capital Group in Charlotte, North Carolina, is only 200 points behind Camilliere, and Birmingham, Alabama-based Colliers investment sales broker Josh Randolph, who won round four, is just behind Buxton with 12,800 points. Coldwell Banker Commercial Metro Brokers' Julien Min, Branch Properties Vice President Robert Krumholz and Colliers' Albert Elmore round out the top players with 12,400 points each. Min and Krumholz are both based in Atlanta, and Elmore is in Birmingham.
Does Camilliere think he can close out the competition with a win? "Let’s hope so!!!" he said in an email.
Krumholz said he plans to stay the course as he endeavors to win the grand prize. "I have stuck with the same strategy overall," he said in an email this week.
His strategy centers on betting on the prices of land being sold at the auction, he said. "I always feel like the land sales" are a safe bet, Krumholz said last month. "People who are buying land speculatively at that sub-million-price point still are always going to do it. It's not slowing them down even with what's going on today" in the market.
Randolph focuses on the buying and selling of investment properties and typically specializes in healthcare real estate. But while wagering on selling prices of properties in Battle of the Bids, he said he places bets on properties in several sectors.