HOME789 Founder and Chief Executive Walton Chu has been named the winner of the Real Estate category at The Urban Developer’s 2026 Urban Leader Awards, held at the Four Seasons Sydney.
A Milestone for Our Founder
On Thursday evening at the Four Seasons Sydney, the property industry gathered for The Urban Developer’s 2026 Urban Leader Awards. More than 160 finalists from across the country were recognised across 21 awards, and Walton Chu was announced as the winner in Real Estate.
The category recognises excellence in the transaction of property — sales, leasing, project marketing and advisory. It is the part of the industry HOME789 has worked in for nearly two decades, and this recognition belongs to everyone who has helped build the business over that time.
It caps a run of recognition for the business. Walton was a finalist in Marketing and Proptech in 2025 and in three categories in 2026, and HOME789 has been a finalist at the REB Innovation Awards two years running.
From One Agency to a National Network
Walton founded HOME789 in 2008, in the middle of the global financial crisis, with a single boutique agency and a clear conviction: that off-the-plan project sales could be run far more openly than the industry allowed.
Rather than appoint panels of agencies to compete over the same stock, he rebuilt the model around a master-agency conjunction structure — one accountable master agent coordinating many independent agencies under governed pricing and open-book reporting. The developer gets a single point of control rather than a panel to referee, and the independent agency gets access to stock it could never reach alone.
He then built the technology to run it. TEAMLINK, developed in-house, is a patented platform with two innovation patents and ten IP claims, and its Conjunction Agent Network allows agencies from different firms to work the same project in real time, without duplication or overselling.
Under Walton’s leadership, that single boutique agency has grown into one of the most active distribution networks in Australian project marketing. HOME789 and TEAMLINK today connect more than 550 agencies and 4,000 agents to 105 developers, and have supported over $5 billion in sales. It got there without becoming one of the large franchise groups it competes against, staying independent and building distribution rather than headcount, with corporate auditing standards applied across the network.
Recognising the People Behind the Projects
What sets The Urban Developer’s Urban Leader Awards apart is that they recognise individuals rather than projects or companies. Each entry is assessed against six criteria: leadership, growth, innovation, responsibility, bravery and distinction.
Bravery is the one that does the most work in this industry. Property regularly asks for decisions made without the benefit of certainty — when to proceed, when to adapt, and when to hold a position the market has not yet agreed with. The buildings are the visible outcome; the judgement behind them usually is not.
Thank You
HOME789 thanks The Urban Developer and presenting partner Zagga for bringing the industry together to recognise the people whose decisions, partnerships and persistence continue to shape Australia’s built environment. HOME789 was also the category sponsor of Developer of the Year, presented on the night by our Group Growth & Strategy Manager Melody Safakoglu — congratulations to Fouad Deiri OAM of Deicorp and to all eleven finalists in that category.
This recognition belongs to the network behind it: the 550 agencies and 4,000 agents who work our projects, the 105 developers who have trusted us with them, and the HOME789 team. We are honoured to be recognised among them, and more determined than ever to keep raising the standard of project marketing in Australia.
About HOME789
HOME789 is a Sydney-based project marketing and real estate agency with more than fifteen years in the Australian property market. Formerly listed on NSX, HOME789 partners with leading developers across residential, mixed-use and masterplanned projects, combining in-house project sales with one of the country’s most active conjunction agent networks, powered by proptech platform TEAMLINK .
Walton Chu, HOME789 — Winner, Real Estate | 2026 Urban Leader Awards