What does a property developer do? How two UTS graduates built one of Australia’s leading property companies

Learning the foundations of property development at UTS 

It might sound like a lot to learn, but a reputable property degree can prepare you to work across the spectrum of property development. At UTS, those degrees include:

• Bachelor of Property Economics
• Bachelor of Construction Project Management
• Graduate Certificate in Construction Management
• Graduate Diploma in Construction Management
• Graduate Certificate in Property Development
• Graduate Diploma in Property Development
• Master of Property Development
• Master of Property Development and Planning
• Master of Property Development and Project Management
• Master of Property Development and Investment

For years, these courses have produced a wealth of property professionals, including Anthony and his co-founder and cousin, Charbel Hazzouri. The pair started Revelop while they were still students in the UTS Property Economics course; today, the company boasts cumulative investments of more than $5 billion.

Anthony says the UTS degree helped the pair build expertise in key areas like property management and valuation, urban planning, economics and finance, market analysis, investment and development.

“Property Economics at UTS was and still is pretty highly regarded,” he says.

“It gave us the ability to study something within our interests but that was broad enough not to pigeonhole us. There were many avenues we could have gone down as a result of that degree.”

Building a property development business

The UTS Property Economics course also gave Anthony and Charbel the confidence to turn their skills into action. Partway through their studies, an opportunity arose to help a family friend with a residential building project, and the cousins jumped at the chance.

The success of that first project gave them the cashflow to launch Revelop. At UTS, they’d learnt about call options, which is a method of securing the opportunity to buy a property at a future date. They used this approach to buy into some small-scale projects to test how it worked in practice.

“We’d have a small deposit, take over these options and then go on and spend a bit more money on the development application through Council, which gave the projects some valuation uplift,” Anthony says.  

“We were taking what we’d learnt in a lot of the UTS valuation and property accounting topics and applying it. Then, taking what we’d learnt from a finance perspective, we could take that uplift and use that as a bit of equity to settle the property and build it.”

Advice for aspiring property developers 

In the years since, Revelop has grown to become a multi-billion-dollar company known for its gargantuan retail portfolio. The cousins spend their days directing a team of 50, identifying new investment opportunities, project managing upcoming developments and overseeing the management of existing assets. 

But they haven’t forgotten what it was like to start out in the field. Anthony’s advice to anyone interested in becoming a property developer or starting their own property development firm is simple: the industry is broad, the careers are limitless, and professional experience will help you get ahead.  

“The beauty of doing a degree like Property Economics is that there's going to always be a subset of the property industry that’s hiring and looking to expand,” he says.

 “With that in mind, go and get any form of property experience you can. Go and do the open homes on a Saturday with a real estate agent. Go and do labouring on a job site. Be an intern at a planning firm. 

“That’s how you learn the industry. Just get as much experience as possible in as many different areas of property as you can.“