Willow Secures Rare Toorak Consolidation After Three-Year Pursuit

Convincing seven individual owners to sell their Toorak units and agree on the same price took Willow Development Group more than three years, countless cups of coffee and working with one particularly stubborn owner who nearly derailed the whole deal. The group has now finalised a multi-year acquisition of eight units at 7-9 Ormsby Grove at Toorak, creating a 1020sq m development site for a boutique luxury residential project with an end value of $60 million. The transaction, which settled in October and is due to settle the same month next year, involved purchasing units from seven individual owners over several years of negotiations. Willow Development Group co-directors Michael Skala and Will Naughton led the acquisition. Skala says the site first appeared on the market in late 2022 before the developer began serious engagement with the owner group. “It came to a head when they finally appointed an agent with consensus on price,” Skala tells The Urban Developer . “We’d been looking at it for such a long period of time that we had done all conceivable machinations of due diligence and were sold on the opportunity.” The developer did not disclose a price, though media speculation suggests $1.125–$1.175 million per apartment. RT Edgar agents Jack Edgar and Mark Wridgway handled all seven transactions off market. ▲ The park-fronted Ormsby Grove site is 150m from Toorak Village amenities and 5km from the CBD. Willow’s approach to multi-owner negotiations prioritises transparency over securing marginal price advantages through information asymmetry. “We’ve never really liked the idea of trying to not be transparent to someone’s neighbour to try and secure a site,” Skala says. “What inevitably happens is those two people talk to each other and then the trust is gone.” The biggest challenge was achieving price consensus among multiple parties. Six of the seven owners insisted on identical pricing, while one owner who had purchased more recently sought a premium. “We had this very circular negotiation where we got to a point where we were comfortable on price, everyone was comfortable on price, then someone wanted more,” Skala says. “It went round in circles until they needed an agent to force some pragmatism.” Skala and Naughton told the owners throughout the process that the only way to get the best price was to sell all of the apartments together as a single transaction with traditional development terms. “This was a complex and delicate acquisition, and we are proud to have delivered a clean outcome that positions the site for a best-in-class residential project,” Naughton says. ▲ Willow Group co-directors Michael Skala and Will Naughton. Willow Group plans to deliver between eight and 10 apartments with basement car parking. The scheme would target downsizers and buyers seeking residence-sized apartments without the budget for standalone homes. The mix will largely consist of larger apartments of two to four bedrooms. The site has north-facing park frontage and is on a cul-de-sac, 150m from Toorak Village amenities. Toorak has few public open spaces beyond large-scale parks including Como, according to Skala, making the site’s frontage to a secluded neighbourhood park rare. “The opportunity to have a park smack bang in front of one of them is very exciting,” he says. Design work is currently being handled by Willow’s team, with the developer working to secure a partnership between two leading architectural firms for the project. Preliminary massing studies and consultant selection are ongoing and the developer plans to lodge a planning application in early 2026. ▲ Completed in 2018, Orchard Piper’s Mathoura Road project set benchmarks for Toorak’s boutique apartment market. Skala says the project builds on recent success stories in the suburb, including three Orchard Piper developments: Toorak Village, where a record-breaking penthouse sale over $20 million was achieved; One Toorak Place, which had $125 million in sales before launch; and the Mathoura Road project comprising 10 Jolson-designed apartments completed in 2018. Prime Edition’s Como Toorak development at 2 Bruce Street achieved record-breaking penthouse sales just under $42 million, with two penthouses selling in the first week of December for $20.95 million each. Penthouse 302 set a new benchmark at $46,659 per square metre, while penthouse 301 achieved $44,000 per square metre. The 16-apartment boutique project, also by Jolson Architecture, is due for completion in February. “Our industry colleagues have already done a bit of the heavy lifting for us, in all honesty, and gone and achieved some fantastic sales results that give us the confidence that, while the sales velocity of those apartments may be slow, the prices can be achieved if the product is right,” Skala says. “And we back ourselves to deliver the product as good, if not better than anyone.” The director believes Melbourne presents compelling value compared to other Australian capitals, with internal analysis showing the city is 20 to 50 per cent cheaper than Sydney on a like-for-like basis. “If you look at the most expensive homes for sale in Melbourne and Sydney, the size and scale you can get in Victoria for the same price as a harbour-fronted $30 million 400sq m block in Point Piper—it’s crazy,” Skala says. ▲ Prime Edition’s 2 Como development this week achieved Toorak’s highest penthouse rates at $46,659 per square metre. Rising construction costs since the pandemic have made projects harder to stack up across Victoria. Apartment prices haven’t increased enough to match the higher building costs, while land prices have remained stubbornly high, squeezing development margins. “It’s just taken a lot of time for revenues to increase such that profitability and viability comes back to the market,” Skala says. “That’s everywhere in Victoria and in every suburb to a different degree.” Unlike Willow Group’s $250-million Surry Hills heritage commercial project it announced in October, the Toorak project aligns with Willow’s boutique residential strategy, which includes two Sydney projects—one nearing completion and another under construction in Rose Bay. The developer is also holding an approved nearby Windsor project that remains unlaunched. Skala says next year may be optimal for market entry given competitor activity in the area. Orchard Piper director Luke McKie, who has delivered multiple Toorak projects, says Toorak is a unique suburb in Melbourne’s property market. “Sydney has about 20 Tooraks, but Toorak is our number one suburb, with extreme wealth concentration in one postcode,” McKie says. According to Domain, the average house price in Toorak is $4.5 million. McKie says the suburb is primed for apartment development with large landholdings close to the city, river and freeway, though securing sites remains challenging. Securing those large landholdings requires patience and strategy—qualities Skala and Naughton have shown over three years of negotiations. ▲ Dangar Barin Smith’s landscape design at Willow Group’s Surry Hills project features native species in rooftop and internal green spaces. Skala believes Melbourne’s prestige suburbs are positioned for significant recovery after an extended period of sluggish performance. Market fundamentals remain strong despite recent headwinds, with Toorak maintaining its position as one of the country’s most sought-after addresses. “If we’re not at the bottom of the cycle, we’ve got to be close and frankly, market evidence suggests that the bottom is behind us and things are moving forwards,” he says. Naughton says the project “sits alongside our existing portfolio of ultra-luxury offerings, and acts as a natural continuation of our focus on highly curated, boutique projects in tightly held locations, reinforcing our reputation for curated, architectural homes and our unwavering commitment to design excellence”. “We are pleased to be part of the revival of the Toorak Village and look forward to working alongside some of Australia’s leading developers across a locale which is renowned for its sophistication, prestige and privacy.”

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