Australian Residential Group (ARG) has appointed two directors of projects as part of a planned national expansion, placing senior leadership on the ground in its three largest markets outside of Queensland.
The Brisbane-based residential property business currently delivers around 1,500 sales annually across five states and territories. The new appointments — Jessica Campbell in Victoria and Simon Chester across the ACT and New South Wales — reflect both the scale of activity in those markets and the increasingly complex demands coming from ARG’s developer clients.
A Changing Brief from Developer Clients
ARG’s established model connects developers with a national and international buyer network spanning 40,000 contacts. Buyers arrive at projects pre-approved, with finance and entity structures already in place — a consistently high settlement rate that has driven significant inbound inquiry from the development and construction sector.
But the nature of that inquiry has shifted.
“The developers we’re talking to aren’t just asking us to sell their stock anymore,” says Guntur Reid, ARG joint managing director. “They’re asking us to stay.”
Developers are now requesting involvement across the full project lifecycle — pre-sales strategy, channel launch, retail selldown, settlement support, and ongoing property management. That breadth of service requires a local presence that can’t be effectively managed from a head office in Brisbane.
Melbourne now represents close to 40 per cent of ARG’s annual sales volume. The ACT and New South Wales, combined, account for a similar share. Both markets grew initially through residual and completed stock — projects where developers needed to clear their balance sheets after conventional sales efforts had stalled. The ability to move that stock efficiently, while holding pricing and settling with low fall-over rates, generated referrals and repeat engagement.
“Developers need someone who can be on site the next morning, who knows the surrounding projects, who understands what happens to their balance sheet after settlement,” Reid said.
The Appointments
Jessica Campbell joins as director of projects for Victoria. She brings more than two decades of experience across project marketing and channel sales strategy, having worked across some of the most active project pipelines in the Australian market. Her role will focus on developer advisory, strategy, and on-the-ground project management for Victoria-based clients.
“We’ve been looking for someone who truly understands what developers need, not just to sell, but to advise, to strategise and to deliver,” said ARG joint managing director Sean Porlier. “Jess has the networks and the experience to back it up.”
Simon Chester takes the director of projects role across the ACT and New South Wales. Chester spent a decade at Geocon, one of Canberra’s largest developers, in a period that included project launches across international markets — China, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates. He initially engaged with ARG as a client before joining the business.
Track Record in Difficult Conditions
ARG points to a number of specific project outcomes as indicative of how the model performs under pressure. At Wova in the ACT, the business was engaged near settlement to clear residual stock across the full project — 124 sales were completed with pricing held and every unit settled.
At Motif in Geelong, ARG delivered 30 sales within the first four days of launch and a further eight shortly after, with a 100 per cent settlement rate and no fall-overs recorded at the line.
The business has also invested in retention at the team level. Partners Ryan Chapman and Lachie McRae have been with ARG for a number of years and record individual sales volumes that compare with those of larger agencies. Stacy Robertson has grown the property management division to more than 2,000 managements nationally, structured around a small, senior team whose remuneration is tied to outcomes rather than volume.
With offices now across five cities — Canberra the most recent addition — ARG has set a target of 5,000 sales per year, more than triple its current annual volume. The appointments of Campbell and Chester are a direct response to that growth objective, placing experienced leadership in the markets where the majority of that volume will be generated.