Three property developers who made their fortunes flogging apartments are the youngest debutantes on this year's list of wealthiest Australians.
The youngest new entrant on the BRW Rich List is Melbourne-based developer Tim Gurner, worth a cool $460 million, according to the Australian Financial Review.
The 34-year-old founded his eponymous firm Gurner in 2013 and is behind a string of developments in hip suburbs outside Melbourne's CBD like Collingwood and Fitzroy and in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley. He has another $2 billion of similar projects in the pipeline.
Gurner borrowed money to open his first business, a gym, when he was 19 years old and then moved into property, eventually co-owning the Urban development group with Melbourne property barron Morry Schwartz. He is now Australia's 141st richest person.
Paul Blackburne, another young developer, makes his debut at number 124 on this year's list with a wealth of $536 million.
The 40-year-old's Blackburne Property Group dominates the Perth apartment market with its high-end offerings, and currently has six projects on sale, with another 400 apartments on four new sites in the pipeline.
Blackburne's family was in property and he fuelled his empire's rise by snapping up several inner-city sites in Perth during the global financial crisis. He hasn't looked back since.
The final young gun is 40-year-old Jonathan Hallinan, whose BMP Corp has built trendy inner-city apartments in Melbourne and Brisbane and spent big on branding and marketing.
Hallinan founded his company in 1995 and now has a comfortable $459-million piggy bank, putting him at number 143 on the Rich List.
He is now looking for sites to develop in and around Los Angeles, according to the AFR.
The three Rich List newbies are not letting fears of oversupply and falling demand in the apartment market dent their confidence.
Gurner said the oversupply was in CBD areas, whereas the areas he builds in are in undersupplied. Few of his clients were foreign investors, he said.
Hallinan told Fairfax Media it was taking longer to sell apartments but his company was taking the softening market into account in its development plans, while also offering financing to prospective buyers.
While the Perth market had slowed, Blackburne said its fundamentals remained robust for his business, which sells mostly to locals.
The full BRW Rich List will be published in the Australian Financial Review Magazine on Friday.
