Management rights is an integral part of Queensland’s infrastructure, especially within the accommodation sector. It is doubtful that the state’s tourist infrastructure would have grown to the extent it has without management rights over the past five decades.

As well as providing the infrastructure, Queensland’s multi-billion-dollar management rights has delivered a lasting, profitable income for mum-and-dad investors, partnerships and small business through to substantial corporates.

As a regulated industry, management rights operates in a diversity of retail, commercial, permanent residential, student and holiday complexes in strata and community title properties. Management rights provides an effective way for a strata title property to operate when a number of units are owned by investors who want to maintain an active role in the operation of their investment.

Queensland did not originate strata title legislation worldwide, or even in Australia, but it did perfect it.

To look at the first “strata title” laws you need to go back to the 1804 Napoleonic Code but, in modern terms, the first condominium law passed was in Puerto Rico in 1958 followed by the Utah Condominium Act of 1960 in mainland US that made it possible for Graystone Manor to be built as the first strata titled condominium.

The initial Australian strata titles legislation was enacted in 1961 when the New South Wales parliament passed the Conveyancing (Strata Titles) Act 1961. The first Queensland legislation was the Building Units and Group Titles Act in 1965, and this has been refined over decades with the Body Corporate and Community Management Act that initiated major industry reforms in 1994 and 1997 that saw the creation of a range of accommodation modules. The process of legislative refinement continues and this year the BCCM Act is again under active review.

Queensland has more than 43,000 strata schemes with 405,000 units that are subject to the BCCM Act. The Gold Coast was the first region to embrace management rights and is, today, the epicentre of the industry but it flourishes in Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Tropical North Queensland and most vacation areas of the state.

Essentially, a management rights business involves the owner of the business enjoying a contractual agreement with the body corporate of a multi-unit complex to supply certain services, in exchange for a salary and the right to earn further commission and services income from individual owners in the complex.

The manager also purchases the manager's unit within the complex giving them a vested and financial interest in the successful performance of the complex.

The practical nature of the work undertaken by resident managers and a range of service providers and industry operators are needed to attract not just visitors, but investors to ensure that the facilities and services that make a Queensland holiday are readily available on site.

Graham Vercoe - Resort Publishing

Check out the full article in the Winter issue of Accom Management Guide.