Tim Willing on healthy habits, high-end builds and the chance encounter that changed his life

As the clouds subside and sunlight begins flooding the Mount Lawley coffee shop that bears his name, Tim Willing comes bounding through the side door and darts between his staff.

I’ve become accustomed to conducting these interviews over lunch, but was warned I would have to make an exception if I wanted to meet with Willing.

Willing Property founder Tim Willing at his coffee shop in Mt Lawley.Credit: Ross Swanborough.

The Perth property developer has been up since 4.45am, as he is every day, to squeeze in at least two hours of cycling and running before sitting down at his desk at 10am.

As a consequence, he tells me, he doesn’t “do” lunch meetings.

“People ask how I make time [for exercise], and I ask them how they don’t make time. It’s the most critical thing, and for me, it’s where the thoughts come more easily,” he tells me, confirming the morning drizzle hadn’t deterred him.

As the son of a professional athlete deeply fixated on health and diet, and a former Australian track cycling champion himself, Willing says it was an ethos formed in childhood which has taught him the value of goal setting and discipline.

But he insists that is not to say he doesn’t support indulgence in moderation.

“Like a good red wine,” he assures me, while insisting I try the avocado on toast.

Willing grew up in Mount Lawley, the lively inner-northern suburb lined with Federation and Colonial style homes he now draws inspiration from and builds apartments alongside.

He began following his carpenter father to construction sites from the age of 4, which he believes laid the foundations for his career in all facets of property.

“I used to want to go everywhere with him, so I grew up on building sites,” he recalls, as my cappuccino and his black coffee arrive.

“I think our industry is characterised often by multiple generations fulfilling the previous generations’ aspirations.

WAtoday’s Jesinta Burton talking to Willing Property founder Tim Willing at Willing Coffee in Mt Lawley.Credit: Ross Swanborough.

“Dad would build homes and sell them, and he was a rare type in that he never worked for anyone other than himself and would do everything — from putting up for sale signs and running the design process to cleaning the slab.”

While he admired his father’s entrepreneurship, and dreams of becoming a professional track cycling champion had landed him a scholarship with the WA Institute of Sport, the Guildford Grammar graduate decided to follow his grandfather into the world of real estate.

When he returned from cycling in Europe, Willing completed a real estate course at Midland TAFE in the early 1990s.

Willing had been selling homes for a number of years when a friend working in Jakarta encouraged him to turn his attention abroad to international real estate opportunities in Indonesia and Singapore.

Without flinching, an ambitious young Willing boarded a plane and headed straight for global real estate giant Jones Lang LaSalle’s office in Jakarta.

“I just turned up, got a contact and contacted them furiously until they would see me, and then they gave me a job,” he says, as my avocado on toast arrives.

Willing worked between Jakarta and Singapore as the company’s international sales manager in an industry overflowing with US dollars until 1998, when a financial crisis wreaked havoc on economies throughout East and South-East Asia.

He relocated to Sydney to lead the project marketing division of investment management group Colliers during the city’s major apartment boom, where he remained for two years until returning to Perth with his tail between his legs at the turn of the millennium.

Willing is interested in the chance encounters in life, and says you won’t meet anyone interesting sitting at home.Credit: Ross Swanborough.

For the four years that followed, Willing ran one of Perth’s first project marketing companies —promoting the ‘Box Building’ on Hay Street and negotiating the purchase of land for the Miami development by self-proclaimed ‘King of Sex’ Malcolm Day, the owner of adultshop.com.

But his career trajectory was altered in 2002, when the stars aligned, and he boarded a plane east only to find out he would be sitting opposite Multiplex heir Tim Roberts.

Willing and Roberts — who had been relegated to business class on a commercial flight after his private plane broke down — talked for the duration of the flight before exchanging details.

Two weeks later, Roberts came knocking with a job offering leading Multiplex’s apartment development arm.

Even before I could afford it, I would always fly business class because I’m not going to meet anyone back in economy that could help me in life

Tim Willing

The decade Willing spent with the company took him across the world, from Monaco and Spain to projects in Multiplex’s home state of WA, including the Old Swan Brewery and Claremont Quarter.

Willing concedes the plane encounter and the career adventure it sparked was, in good part, a product of sheer luck.

But he also suspects he owes part of it to his interest in chance encounters and his propensity to place himself in situations that greatly increase the likelihood of them occurring.

“Even before I could afford it, I would always fly business class because I’m not going to meet anyone back in economy that could help me in life,” he tells me.

“I’m very interested in the chance encounters in life, and I’ll often do things that I don’t necessarily need to, like going to the State Buildings even when I don’t have an appointment in the city.

“Something may happen, it may not, but it sure as hell won’t happen at home.”

He left the global construction giant as the company went public to found Willing Property in 2012 after convincing late healthcare billionaire and philanthropist Paul Ramsay to back him.

Since then, Willing has made a name for himself by seeking out projects in more historic neighbourhoods and aiming to build apartment developments that sit comfortably alongside the single-storey homes built decades earlier.

The avocado on toast at Willing Coffee in Mt Lawley.Credit: Ross Swanborough.

And he is meticulous, having bought craftsmen out of retirement to teach the arches and basketweave brickwork typical of the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

The ceilings of his high-end developments are always at least 2.7 metres, Willing tells me, with skirting boards, cornice work and 18 millimetre timber floors.

He draws inspiration from grand apartments he has seen in European cities, and throws hospitality into the mix to encourage community connection.

He also admires the work of industry heavyweights like Adrian Fini, best known for his revamp of the State Buildings, someone Willing believes should receive a knighthood for what he has done for Perth.

“I’m only interested in building beautiful buildings, pursuing the most finite detail,” he says.

“I probably should be more financially motivated, but at the same time I want beautiful outcomes that are still going to be here for 100 years or more.

“I’m interested in developing in places that have a natural energy, too, and coffee shops are like the new religious institutions; they’re part of a ritual in a daily life, and something that we all need is that interaction with people.”

The high-end developments of his company — which spans property, construction and hospitality — lend themselves to Perth’s generation of wealthy downsizers, many of whom are travelling more but that he says still want “space” and “grandeur”.

Despite only pursuing mid-rise apartment builds, most of which are in inner-city suburbs, Willing is no stranger to the community resistance to density troubling developers.

While acknowledging how difficult it is to navigate, Willing believes WA has one of the best planning regimes in the country.

“I wouldn’t even go and talk to council myself, even with all the experience I have, unless I had a professional planner and a professional planning lawyer — even the most esteemed legal minds have difficulties understanding and interpreting [local planning policies],” he says.

“By the time it goes out for public consultation, the community sees it and assumes developers get everything they want.

“I understand the frustration of homeowners because the local law is so prescriptive, and [property developers] can do all these things that they couldn’t, but what the public doesn’t realise is that by the time a developer gets an approval, it’s 18 months, often a lot of work and millions of dollars invested.”

The developer says people get very fixated on height in Perth for some reason, but he’s not building 12 and 20 and 40 level apartment buildings. Credit: Ross Swanborough.

He is a fan of the Development Assessment Panel process, which allows developments to be assessed by planning professionals and uninfluenced by local politics.

That doesn’t make the process any easier, though, he tells me.

We’re surrounded by customers, and there has been a steady stream of pedestrian foot traffic heading in and out of the café on this Friday morning.

But Willing says we’re sitting in a development that was the subject of a 400-page report from the local council outlining the reasons it should never be built, only for it to receive praise from government ministers and be frequented by those who initially opposed it once it was completed.

He was dragged to the WA Supreme Court by a neighbour over another development, and stared down strong opposition on his Coolbinia apartment complex — even fielding letters to his home claiming he would be responsible for increasing the death toll on an already congested road.

Perth is a first generation of apartment buyers, Willing says, but he doesn’t understand how the 2 million people living in the world’s longest city could believe continuing the sprawl would be a better alternative.

“People get very fixated on height here for some reason, and I’m not building 12 and 20 and 40 level apartment buildings with 200 people; we’re talking four, five to eight levels with 35 apartments,” he says.

“People think ‘Oh my gosh, there are apartments going up everywhere’, but they’re not motoring out the freeway and being alarmed necessarily by the godforsaken places we’re creating with no soul, that their only cultural icon is a local Coles.

“The national affordability debate is almost predicated on people’s God given right to build a four bed, three bath, bespoke home. This would be unusual for almost any other part of the world.

“We can’t just continue using the land because it’s there. There are better ways, and I think there are better ways to interact in diverse communities, and apartment development is sustainable.”

As we push away our coffee cups and prepare to leave, I ask Willing what he would like his legacy to be.

He tells me his 16-year-old daughter has informed him of her intention to take the reins of the family business soon, but jokes that he may retain a spot on the payroll as a barista.

“I want to make the best places to live we possibly can and create meeting places, I want people to see a building in 50 years time and know it was a Willing building,” he says.

“I’ve never feared saying that I do try hard, whether it’s this coffee shop, our development business, or a brick being laid on our site.

“My advice would be to just try because you’ll be surprised what’s possible.”

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