The current industry debate involving investments, holiday letting and resident management is timely as the Body Corporate and Community Management Act again comes under review later this year. 

What is clearly emerging is that the diverse number of stakeholders within the sector is keen to ensure that they better understand where they fit into the picture. 

The flourishing economy and the buoyant share market are making many Australians examine their property investments and that is important for all individuals. 

But property investment, both for residences and for investment, especially in holiday letting is a complex issue which provides a mixture of returns, taxation issues, emotional decisions and capital gains. 

Australia is undergoing a fundamental change in lifestyle and medium density living is growing in popularity for a diversity of reasons, essentially because people want to be in central locations.  

The current debate on resident management services is an important issue and I wish to state that QRAMA's position on Management Rights is quite clear - it is the best form of management for strata titled apartments.    

It is simply not good enough to attack management rights and offer no solution or comparison with alternative systems.   Let's face it, the alternatives are: 

• hotel style management where the operator has full control of the property for the lease period
• corporate operators who must satisfy the financial expectations of their shareholders before the owners’ returns are considered
• employed management where a number of owners accept responsibility for a part-time role

Quite clearly, the first two alternatives have extra layers of expense and it is arguable as to whether or not the return on investment to owners would be improved.  

The third alternative regarding an employed manager has been and is used in a number of buildings however, as we understand it, the returns are no better and the service level is likely to be less.  

QRAMA really represents the "traditional management rights operators" - the mum and dad operator who is on-site and accountable to their owners daily.    

Our members are acutely aware of average return on investment, they too are owners and have strategies in place to enhance owners’ return on investment where possible.    

All owners must understand that tariff (or rent) is a market driven force and as most resident managers can only expend approx $200 per unit on maintenance,  there is not much they can do in order to make the unit more attractive to customers unless the owners agree.    

Naturally, even then there are a number of factors impacting on achieving higher tariffs and/or occupancy such as new developments in the immediate area, new and emerging destinations, increased fuel prices that impact on travel expenses, economic conditions, air fares, strength of the Aussie dollar, the weather and competing destinations. 

It is QRAMA's position that "traditional management rights" (the mum & dad type operators) have a number of benefits over corporate operators.    

We expect that a great deal of owners’ dissatisfaction would come from the fact that they cannot easily speak to a decision maker - this is not the case where the individual type operator is on-site and working in the business.    

Additionally, our traditional type operator does not have to answer to shareholders and others.  

The traditional type operator must answer to his unit owners and therefore, in effect he only serves the one type of boss.   

In our view, unit owners are likely to be more satisfied with this type of operation. 

On behalf of our members I am concerned that there is a high turnover of resident managers and the reason for this is the 24/7 pressure of seeking to satisfy the needs of the various stakeholders. 

QRAMA is an organization which provides a daily support to its members through its regional networks and from our head office operations. 

As president, I urge owners to engage positively with their resident manager, we are human and we are there to help and to serve.