5 minute read
ARAMA Report
What is it, who needs it and why it’s like orange juice
How do you properly insure your management rights business?
Every business takes out insurance and 24 hours a day, seven days a week ARAMA is working to ensure the safety and wellbeing of the Management and Letting Rights (MLR) industry.
The average worth of each MLR business in Australia is a hefty $1.5 million, and we provide insurance for the industry, not just through discounted conventional policies covering fire and accident, public liability and legal fees, but more importantly, through our advocacy and the way in which we continue to represent this fascinating industry.
This year we celebrate 30 years of ARAMA at work, and it was our advocacy in the 1990s that safeguarded the management rights industry against legislation that would have ruined it. But we also safeguard our members through innovative assistance.
Under our new exclusive, membership service called A-LEGAL, ARAMA provides free legal cover of up to $250,000 if our members become involved in litigation over such matters as protecting their contract from unfair termination, workplace health and safety, unfair dismissal, tax audits, defamation, discrimination or in other disputes associated with caretaking service agreements. If you don’t need legal protection of up to $250,000 good, but it is also good to know that if you do, ARAMA is there to support you. In 2020 we also launched A-MAP, ARAMA’S Member Assistance Program, which provides a crisis counselling hotline if our members need emergency stress relief. Our members can pick up a phone and in 20 minutes they can be talking to a qualified psychologist or crisis counsellor, who will give them the tools and advice to deal with whatever problems they face in these stressful times.
If you don’t need A-MAP to help you navigate your way through the daily stresses then good for you, but it is good to know that if you do, ARAMA is there to support you. A-MAP and A-LEGAL are free for ARAMA members. No one else provides these services to management rights holders. ARAMA also provides a priceless array of free operational advice, and members can benefit from the fact that we are available to give advice and assistance 24/7, 365 days a year. As the ARAMA CEO, I have fielded calls from our members on Saturdays and Sundays, and even over the Christmas break, when there have been emergencies. While you may not need ARAMA on weekends and public holidays it is good to know that ARAMA is there to support you in times of need. I do not know of any other peak industry body that provides this level of service to its members.
ARAMA has worked hard over the last 30-plus years to help create and build the MLR industry into one of the best business models in the world.
ARAMA was involved in the legislation that made management rights the lifeblood of the Queensland tourism industry and we have been
Trevor Rawnsley,
CEO, ARAMA
protecting and nurturing that industry to the point that it is now an extremely valuable business model where you can get back up to six or seven times the annual goodwill when you sell a MLR business, plus a return of 15 percent to 20 percent per annum and sometimes more, for your eff orts. Much of the reason for that is because ARAMA has been there putt ing in the work on behalf of its members.
Because of our advocacy we made sure that the laws didn't change in the way they were about to in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Those changes would have wiped out the industry at a time when it was really commencing to establish itself. ARAMA continues this work today. Without ARAMA, MLR businesses would look vastly diff erent to the way they look now. They would be worth less and they would not have the same kind of protections they currently enjoy. Our message to the industry, even to rights holders who are not ARAMA members, is that we have been servicing your needs for over 30 years by protecting you, advocating for you, and representing you by lobbying your business model to governments on your behalf. No matt er what the detractors might say about management rights, it has been proven that no one can do a bett er job of looking aft er a complex and the interests of the unit owners than a resident manager. The advocacy and representation that ARAMA provides in dealing with government benefi ts everyone in this fascinating industry. As a trusted peak industry body, ARAMA is listened to by the legislators, and we can open doors that your business would never be able to. As an ARAMA member you can have your say and have direct input into the laws that aff ect your business.
ARAMA is like an insurance policy, making sure that the MLR industry stays strong and profi table. That is our role!
But it is surprising to me that more than half of those in the industry are still not ARAMA members.
To me that’s a bit like someone walking past and grabbing a juicy orange from a beautiful orchard, eating the orange and saying, “how good was that?” Those satisfi ed with the fruit should also spare a thought for the people who laboured to produce it, those who tilled the soil, fertilised the ground and watered the plant to make that tree grow.
ARAMA is a collective of the combined eff orts of its members and has spent more than 30 years making the management rights industry strong and healthy, fruitful and appealing. The more people who join our association and retain their membership, the stronger the MLR industry will become, and the bett er it will be for everyone involved in this wonderful business.
So, the next time you are thinking about how you can build a bett er business, consider what your business would be like if ARAMA was not there to continually represent the needs of the entire industry.
This is why we liken ARAMA to insurance for the entire MLR industry.
Juice anybody!
Damian Quinn
Management Rights Transactions
One of the Sunshine Coast’s most experienced firms in on-site management rights transactions.
• Commercial & Business Law • Property Law • Litigation & Dispute Resolution • Retirement Villages • Wills & Estate Planning • Body Corporate
SUNSHINE COAST & QUEENSLAND WIDE
Australian Resident Accommodation Managers Association is the peak industry body representing the interests of people who are involved in management rights.
