I recently had an interesting discussion with one of our managers, lets call him Geoff, whose Body Corporate committee had very generously advised him they were concerned he was being underpaid. Our manager asked me how much remuneration I thought a manager of a complex of his size and location should be paid… and I’m embarrassed to say, all I could do was shrug my shoulders. You see although I’ve worked in this industry for over a decade, speak to dozens of onsite managers every day, and am a licenced letting agent myself… The truth is, I personally, have never worked as a caretaker and I really have no idea how much a manager should get paid. Fortunately for Geoff, I did have a novel solution to answering his question and I thought it might help other managers wondering the same thing.
As most of our audience already know, we have a very extensive database of Management Rights. If there’s a management rights for sale in Australia, our website knows about it. Thanks to all the wonderful brokers out there, we have extensive, accountant checked financial data, on literally thousands of complexes around the country. To my knowledge, there isn’t a more complete set of data anywhere – I’ve spoken to a few MR valuers whose eyes narrow to slits when I tell them of the data our site holds. Of course this data is sensitive, and I would never disclose identifiable information to anyone relating to our listings…. But as a collective, this data can be very useful to help our industry gain a better understanding of trends and averages – and it can certainly be put to good use answering Geoff’s question, and probably many other managers who are wondering the same thing.
I therefore wrote a bit of code that mined our database. The code sorted every listing into regions based on their radial proximity to nearest regional centres. It then took the total annual salary per complex and divided it by the number of lots in each complex to get a per lot figure. It then averaged the results of each complex according to their region and made a note of the sample size in the region. The result, was a very reliable figure, indicating exactly what the average remuneration was, per lot, for both holiday, and permanent complexes around the country. Here’s the stats we got back – now, keep in mind these figures on relate to remuneration (BC Salary) – they have nothing to do with multipliers or letting pool size – this is just caretaking. Enjoy the data, and if you have any other questions relating to general industry data, don’t hesitate to post them in the comments below and I’ll see what we can do.
Permanent Complex Salary Rate
Beenleigh $ 1,180 PA, per lot (sample size: 12)
Brisbane $ 1,318 PA, per lot (sample size: 108)
Cairns $ 1,310 PA, per lot (sample size: 12)
Gold Coast $ 1,474 PA, per lot (sample size: 154)
Ipswich $ 1,317 PA, per lot (sample size: 4)
Logan $ 1,290 PA, per lot (sample size: 7)
Sunshine Coast $ 1,326 PA, per lot (sample size: 11)
Townwsville $ 1,388 PA, per lot (sample size: 5)
Resort Complex Salary Rate
Brisbane $ 1,580 PA, per lot (sample size: 8)
Cairns $ 2,003 PA, per lot (sample size: 59)
Gold Coast $ 1,664 PA, per lot (sample size: 158)
Hervey Bay $ 1,340 PA, per lot (sample size: 4)
Northern NSW $ 1,846 PA, per lot (sample size: 5)
Port Macquarie $ 1,913 PA, per lot (sample size: 8)
Rockhampton $ 1,314 PA, per lot (sample size: 4)
Sunshine Coast $ 2,004 PA, per lot (sample size: 125)
Whitsundays $ 2,409 PA, per lot (sample size: 6)
Wide Bay $ 1,392 PA, per lot (sample size: 8)
Thank you for doing this. I am a management Rights owner for 3 permanent complexes. This is indeed a very good list. At the moment the committee at a new complex believe that we am overpaid and is continuously on our case. However, when looking at the data we are actually very much to the lower scale by about $150 per lot below the average. I am not to concerned about that because we do not have to live onsite, and there is no pool, no barbecue area to manage.
It would be interested to see data results with some distinction when there are pools, Barbecue areas involved in daily duties. I am prepared to provide my information anonymously for such a study.
That’s a great point. We can tell, to some extent, if the manager lives onsite (by identifying if there’s manager’s realestate included)… and we can also tell if there’s a swimming pool present… gardens are a little more subjective… so they would be harder to capture. Also, some brokers feed to us with software that doesn’t include these parameters so we’d have to identify and filter such results from our sample data. I will crunch some more data next week for you and see what we can uncover – watch this space and thanks for the feedback!
It would be good to break that data down even more, ie there is more gardening work generally in a townhouse or villa complex than in a block of units. If there is a swimming pool, gym, tennis court likewise. If there are fixed hours when the manager must be available it should be worth more also.
It is commendable to see some figures printed here. We have always been wondering where do we stand….
Hoping one day there will be more data for Brisbane since it is the largest area. Perhaps into different size: Under 50, 50-100, over 100 for exampl
Hi Nick, I’m assuming these figures are ex-gst. Did you manage to crunch any other numbers as suggested above? Ie swimming pools and size of complex?
Thanks for the helpful benchmarks. What would the average maintenance requirements be compared to the dollar value?
According to these figures our Caretaker is way overpaid by about $60k a year.
A new contract was written in 2017 with the help of a rogue committee which took all swimming pool duties out of it, gave him exclusive access to all storage areas on site and a contract with 5 + 5 + 5.
Is there any way that his remuneration could be reviewed or are we dudded for now and forever!
These numbers are JUST averages – they do not take into account the very specific details of a given complex which are subject to massive variation. Just because your caretaker has a different pay to the average, in no way suggests you are over paying.