In our 69-Unit building in Qld, the building caretaker/manager is paid $98K indexed to the CPI. The manager bought the management rights off the developer for, I’m guessing, in excess of $500K. Having bought the management rights, our manager can sell those rights to someone else.

Our body corporate had to approve the present manager after he was interviewed by the committee, after our bc solicitor had perused the contract and given an opinon, and so on. Likewise, there would be a requirement for the body corporate to approve of the “next” manager subject to advice from our bc solicitor, contracted bc management company, etc.

Our son lives in a multi-stage complex with over 500 units. That complex has two contracted managers who would have to receive considerably more than $98K each, possibly around the $200K mark.

Our manager is contracted to carry out cleaning and maintenance of the common areas, lifts, pool, gymnasium, …, arrange for the repair and replacement of common property structures and plant equipment, be contactable 24 hours/day to deal with issues relating to fire safety, resident misbehaviours, etc., etc., as detailed in a comprehensive list of duties.

Our manager has rental rights on three units, another 20 are managed by external real estate agencies. He lives on site which means that he identifies with the apartment block, it’s in his interests to ensure that all plant equipment is operating as it should, etc. Our manager would’ve bought his unit for somewhere in the low $400K’s.

I’ve never experienced a manager who lives offsite although I have a friend who lives in a complex and rarely sights its manager. Maybe his manager llives offsite. I can’t see that its viable or desirable to have a manager who lives at another location. 

As a contractor, the manager has to arrange his own superannuation & insurance. He has no holiday pay, sick leave, etc. because he is not an employee of the body corporate.

Being a bc contractor, the manager does not have to work 9-to-5, Monday to Friday. If his work for the day, as detailed in a table of duties, is completed in three hours, he can “clock off” and retire to our heated pool to sun bake if he so wishes. That our manager can be found working as early as 7.00 AM in the morning to as late as 9.30 PM, any day of the week, is an indication of the demands of the job and his commitment to his duties. 

I experienced a month of caretaking duties in our apartment block (as a favour for a friend) when there was less than 50 per cent of units occupied. $98K/year would not be enough to tempt me to buy the management rights to our units. 

Getting rid of a caretaker who is not doing a very good “job” can be difficult. Preventing a caretaker from getting a “pay rise” can be very difficult – if it goes to adjudication the end result will be the average of what the caretaker is seeking (based on his expert’s opinion) and what the body corporate is prepared to offer (based on its expert’s opinion). 

The pre-sale of caretaker-manager contracts in Queensland is institutionalised corruption which is illegal in NSW and Victoria (and possibly elsewhere).

All it does is put more money into developers’ pockets – money which is added to the fees paid by unit owners for no other reason than to pay back the initial investment. There is no evidence that this money benefits apartment purchasers in any way.

In exchange, the manager gets to choose the terms of the contract and pass them on to the next incumbent for whatever profit they can make, and so the cycle continues.

This has more than a whiff of “white shoe” about it and is an ugly stain on the face of Queensland strata.  Even uglier are the professional groups who should know better but support and sustain this fundamentally corrupt institution for no better reason that knowing on what side their bread is buttered.

Some day a Queensland government with a streak of integrity will shut this cash cow down.  I’m sure there are many caretakers in Queensland who do a good job for a reasonable fee but there is a Murphy’s law in business – if the law is bent out of shape so people can be exploited, then they will be.

By the way, I have spoken at many Queensland conferences on this and I have yet to find anyone who can up with a convincing argument as to why Queensland needs this law and the rest of the country doesn’t.