UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A team of four Penn State Smeal College of Business undergraduate students combined to produce the winning presentation in the 10th Annual Mulroy Real Estate Challenge, a national real-estate-development case competition hosted by Villanova University’s Daniel M. DiLella Center for Real Estate.
Senior real estate students Brett Ambrogi, Zach Barone, Will Denney and Brendan Warrington claimed the top prize of $5,000. A team from the University of Connecticut claimed the second-place prize of $3,000. A team from Florida State University took home the third-place prize of $2,000.
Another team from Smeal, which included juniors Dominic Gambone and Sean Hofmann, and sophomores Adam Raggi and Jake Miller, advanced to the semifinals. Penn State Smeal was the only school to have two teams advance that far.
The competition, which was held April 4-5 in Philadelphia, attracted 28 teams from 23 different universities. The case assignment involved a six-acre ground-up development site on Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia. Students were assigned the task of creating and pitching a mixed-use development plan, market analysis, and financing plan to judges from the commercial real estate industry.
Penn State Smeal students who compete in real estate case competitions are selected from an ongoing elective course offered by the Department of Risk Management in coordination with Smeal’s Institute of Real Estate Studies, Risk Management 497A: Real Estate Case Competition Course. The course is taught by Steve Bisbee, adjunct instructor of risk management and a 2006 Penn State MBA graduate.