Be careful where you get advice

Published: 05 March 2008.

Contributed by Terry McMiles of Terry McMiles

Management Rights are a very safe business. Banks consider them excellent security. It is practically unheard of for any Resident Manager to go broke

The above statements are all true yet every week I hear of people being talked out of investing in Management Rights!

The reason is that hardly anyone really understands Management Rights. Yes that's right, hardly anyone understands how these businesses can operate and more important, how they should operate. There is a 80-90% chance that your traditional advisors i.e. your Bank Manager or Accountant will be inexperienced in Management Rights. They may know something, but in the real scheme of how to successfully run these businesses . . . not much!

1) You will hear stories of how "so & so" lost 35% of his letting pool to outside Agents in the first 2 years of operation.

2) You will hear how the body corporate committee made "so & so's" life a misery. Always complaining and always obstructive.

These (and other stories in the same veign) can be horror stories. So who tells them?

It is usually the "advisor" who doesn't understand the Industry. And sometimes it may come from "the horses mouth" - yes, "so & so" himself.

What whoever is giving you the advice fails to tell you is this.

Good old "so & so" (he "means well" you know) has the people skills of a rabid brown dog on a bad day! Of course he will lose his letting pool, of course he will get the body corporate Chairman "offside". Good old "so & so" wanders through life offending almost everyone he meets.

We've all had the experience of bad service in a retail shop and we wonder "Why is that person dealing with the Public?" What we need to remember is that Management Rights can be just like Retail . . . sometimes the wrong person is doing the job!

I have never yet met a person of above average intelligence and above average people skills who cannot operate successfully in Management Rights. You need the intelligence to want to learn what you should be doing in a particular circumstance and you need the people skills to make it happen. It is not "rocket science, mostly just common sense.

But please don't listen to "bad press" about the Industry passed on by people who don't understand the Industry when the stories are about people who never should have gone into the Industry.