Australia’s Richest 250 #112: Jonathan Hallinan

To crack this list, it’s all work and no play, says Jonathan Hallinan.

Jonathan Hallinan. Picture: Nic Walker.

Property developer Jonathan Hallinan, 43, is the founder of property group BPM and has amassed wealth of $866 million, but not without personal cost.

His company has residential and hotel developments in Melbourne and Brisbane, and other projects on the boil in Los Angeles.

FULL LIST: Australia’s Richest 250

He has also acquired a men’s suiting business – the Cloakroom – which currently has boutiques in Brisbane, Montreal and Tokyo. It will also open in Melbourne on the top floor of BPM’s soon to be completed Shadow Play development and will include a bar. Cloakroom makes all of Hallinan’s suits.

Then there’s an upcoming health and fitness brand that will focus on yoga, Pilates and meditation. That is expected to launch this year once Hallinan can build the necessary partnerships.

In Los Angeles, he has invested in a major new restaurant on the site of the former Grandmaster Records recording studio in Hollywood, with the Botanical Hospitality Group. He’s also looking to develop apartment buildings featuring his signature minimalist design for the city’s popular build-to-rent model. He says he will announce site acquisitions in LA later this year.

Hallinan says he has been working in the property business since he was 19, and that for more than 20 years he has been completely committed to his career at the expense of a life away from work. “There is nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice,” he says of his path to becoming one of the most interesting and successful property developers in the country.

Being successful, he says, is a lonely business. “It’s insulating. People see really successful people as the successful people that they’d love to be, but to be incredibly successful at any one thing, you’re actually living a very insulated life. You’re not necessarily worldly ... you’re not life experienced. My friends who have nothing are far more life experienced than I am.

“To get to this position took a drive that was all consuming. It’s not just hard work, it means that I wake up and I’m already thinking about work. I’m in the shower and thinking about it. I’m with the most important people in my life, and really, I’m thinking about my next deal. It’s that level of all-consuming that it takes to be successful. When you create something truly amazing … it’s in control of us, we’re not in control of it. I absolutely believe that.”

The secret to his success, Hallinan’s says, is in acknowledging that it not only requires a sacrifice to get there, but that you also need to love what you do.

“To be successful at any business, I think you need to be seriously involved in it and very passionate about it,” he says. “I don’t ever touch any business or invest in anything just because it makes me money. I get offered all sorts of amazing opportunities, but anything you’ve seen that I’m invested in, I’m deeply passionate about it and intimately involved in it, right down to the knives and forks.”

‘By 19 he had purchased his first property. He renovated and subdivided, and doubled his investment in just 18 months.’

The rewards of a hard-work ethic were brought home to Hallinan, who grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Waverley, from a very early age. He got his first job at the age of 10 selling newspapers on the street. “By that age I was already earning as much as my dad was earning,” he says. “It sounds easy – you just go and get the papers and sell them – but oh my God it was hard. You do that right through cold winters and hot summers and you learn what hard work really is.”

Hallinan’s first involvement with the property industry was as a carpenter when he left school. By 19 he had purchased his first property, after completing his apprenticeship. He renovated and subdivided the site, and doubled his investment in just 18 months. The experience, he says, taught him a valuable lesson about quality construction and good design.

“I think beautifully designed houses, or apartment buildings – or even if it’s just your suit – they’re better looked after and they have longevity, and they have more growth,” he says. “It’s a win-win for everybody. If I create a building that people are moving into and they’re really proud to live there, then they will maintain it and look after it, and it will therefore have longevity from an investment point of view as well.

“If we create everything just purely based on how it can get built as cheaply as possible and make as much as possible for the bottom line, then yes, we will make money today but it doesn’t have the longevity.

“If you look at all my buildings, they’re a single form, generally a single colour, maximum two colours. It’s all about simplicity. If you look at the most beautiful contemporary buildings in Melbourne – the ones winning awards and the ones people love – they’re often made from just one or two materials, and they’re the most simple.”

Good design, says Hallinan, has given him an edge over other developers in the current new apartment downturn.

“In the booming market that we’ve just seen you haven’t needed to do it [have good design] to make the margins, but what great design allows you to do is continue to do business when others can’t, and in markets where others can’t.

“I don’t think we could have built a multi-billion-dollar pipeline if we weren’t committed to design. Australia’s becoming a more and more sophisticated market, especially for the investor. They’re looking at far more now than just the square metre floor area of what they’re buying.”

In recent years Hallinan has decided to seek out the work-life balance he has forgone in getting to the enviable position he finds himself in now. “Yeah, I’m 43, so it took me until I was 40 to get to this realisation,” he says. “I’ve been in the business since I was 19, so you know, 21 years of being completely 100 per cent committed at all cost.

“It’s a bit like being an Olympic athlete. They’re not getting there with balance, they’re not living a multilayered life and winning the 100m sprint. But I now realise there’s a whole lot more that is way more rewarding than just being super successful.”

So does that mean he has found more balance in his life after achieving such phenomenal success at a young age?

“It’s certainly less single-focused than it was,” he says. “I’ve changed a lot and I’ve worked some things out. But I think if there’s something that would be good to leave the reader with, it’s that if you admire the super successful, what are you actually admiring? I certainly wouldn’t recommend it.”

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