How Wickton brings confidence to the off the plan apartment market with an in-house team: Five minutes with Blanco Norton and Will Leaf

In late 2023, developer Wickton quietly announced themselves to the Bayside market, launching two apartment projects in Hampton.

First they launched Linacre Rise, a collection of 27 apartments on Linacre Road, and then a week later followed up with 58 Beach, just six apartments around 750 metres away.

Wickton is founded and run by architect Will Leaf and project manager Blanco Norton, who have brought their expertise together to create a development company that they believe brings the two most important parts of project delivery together in-house.

With everything going on at Wickton, we went down to the Beach Road display suite to catch up with the two founders to talk a little bit more about their approach to property development.

Norton says the interesting part about the collaboration is that it allows them to bring the best of both worlds together, both Will being able to draw on his experience from VCAT and planning and himself handling the early feasibility modelling having done so previously with a range of other developers.

Leaf, who grew up in Hampton, is also a founder of architecture firm Ewert Leaf. He's designed around 50 projects in Bayside, from townhouses and single homes to apartment projects.

"We have a strong relationship with council and we see these buyers that are like us and that have family like us, and we've been tailoring the product to that demographic for a long time," Leaf says.

Leaf believes his and Norton's skillset bring the two most important disciplines in the project, being the architect and project manager.

"We really see this as providing assurances to buyers, in the sense that they're not being outsourced these two roles and it's about us being at the coal face and being responsible for the product."

To find out more about Wickton, visit their Urban profile here.