Property manager: what the role involves

A New South Wales strata management firm's guide says a property manager's usual employer is a real estate agency. The guide frames the role as acting for the landlord, and for the tenants who live in the place. The property being managed may be a house, a unit in a strata scheme, or a strata titled lot. The guide says the manager deals with the tenants, gathers their rent, sees to certain bills, and arranges repairs and maintenance.

The guide is written around the New South Wales strata legislation of 1996. Its own note says the guide does not reflect the 2015 New South Wales strata Act, which began on 30 November 2016, and that the piece is for information only.

The guide sets out how a strata manager, a building manager or caretaker, and a property manager differ. In it, a licensed strata manager runs the day to day business of a building or scheme that is strata titled or community titled, and ensures it is run properly for the people who own or rent there. The guide lists the tasks: holding meetings, gathering strata levies, arranging repairs and maintenance, and keeping the scheme's finances and strata insurance in order. Complaints among residents go to the strata manager, who brings them to the Executive Committee to settle. The guide notes other names for the role: owners corporation manager, strata managing agent and body corporate manager, with different titles tending to be used in different states.

The guide describes a building manager, also called a caretaker, as someone usually based at the building and doing daily cleaning and maintenance there. That manager tells the strata manager what repairs are needed, the guide says, and is the contact for contractors doing work on common property. The role usually works normal business hours, with fewer hours at the weekend.

Inside a unit, the guide says the property manager looks after repairs and maintenance within the apartment's airspace. Anything to do with common property is the strata manager's job. If a tenant raises something to do with strata, the property manager takes it up with the strata manager. The guide says a tenant typically has no direct contact with the strata manager, which represents the lot owners only.

The guide says the original owner or developer appoints a caretaker, or the owners corporation does. Any agreement between the original owner and a caretaker, or a building management agreement, ends when the first Annual General Meeting (AGM) takes place, according to the guide. The guide says the agenda for that meeting includes a motion about appointing a caretaker, and about the duties that person would take on.

The guide says that a building management agreement is capped at ten years under the Act, from 10 February 2013. The two parties may still agree to renew it, in the guide's account. The firm's own suggestion is to take appropriate advice before appointing a building manager, and to appoint a caretaker through the strata manager.