The cast: three different roles people call "the manager"
- A service contractor is engaged by the body corporate for at least a year to supply services other than administrative ones — pool cleaning, gardens, general grounds work. Not an employee, and distinct from the body corporate manager (who supplies administrative services under a different, much shorter engagement).
- A letting agent is authorised by the body corporate to let lots and collect rent for investor-owners, licensed under the Property Occupations Act 2014. Owners are never obliged to use them — letting privately or through any real estate agent is always allowed.
- A caretaking service contractor is both at once — a service contractor who also holds the letting authorisation (or is an associate of the letting agent). This is the "management rights" arrangement: they typically own or lease a lot, run the letting business from it, sit on the committee as an automatic non-voting member, and must comply with the statutory codes of conduct for both roles.
Small Schemes and Specified Two-lot Schemes Module schemes cannot have caretaking service contractors or letting agents at all — only plain service contractors, capped at one-year terms.
The term caps — and why 25-year agreements exist
The maximum term depends on the scheme's regulation module:
- Standard Module: 10 years
- Accommodation Module: 25 years (Commercial Module likewise)
Crucially, the term includes every right or option to extend or renew — whether in the original agreement or agreed later. There is no lawful stacking of options beyond the cap. The minimum term for any service contractor engagement is one year.
Those module numbers explain the entire "top-up" economy: management rights are bought and sold as businesses, and the business is worth more with more years on the contract. Hence the recurring general meeting motion asking owners to extend the term back toward the maximum. Whether to grant one is entirely the owners' commercial decision — the law caps what can be asked, not what should be given.
Also worth knowing: the body corporate itself cannot sell the letting or caretaking rights. The developer may grant the initial engagement (setting the initial remuneration, which should relate to the work); after that, new engagements are decided by ordinary resolution at a general meeting, and the meeting notice must include the contract terms and any extension or renewal options.
The voting mechanics that decide top-up motions
Three procedural rules shape every contested caretaker motion, and most owners learn them only after losing a vote:
- Once per financial year. A motion to increase the contractor's pay, extend their contract, or expand their letting authorisation can only be considered once in a financial year. A failed top-up cannot simply be re-run at the next meeting.
- Secret ballot for extension options. An amendment to a caretaking service contract that includes an option for extension or renewal must be decided by secret ballot.
- No proxy votes on these amendment motions — every vote cast is the voter's own.
Add the paperwork rule — the general meeting notice must include an explanatory note in the approved form explaining any amendment, and the amendment itself must be in writing, stating term, duties and payment — and a committee reviewing a top-up motion has a genuine checklist: is this the year's one bite, is the ballot format right, is the explanatory note attached, and does the extended term stay inside the module's cap counting every option?
Transfers: the sale of the business
With body corporate approval, a caretaker or letting agent can sell their business — the engagement transfers to the buyer. The committee decides the approval and may weigh the transferee's character, financial standing, competence, qualifications, experience and training, plus the terms of the transfer. It has 30 days to decide once given the necessary information, cannot unreasonably withhold approval, can recover its reasonable costs of the approval process, and cannot ask for any other fee for considering it.
One structural detail: transfers within the first two years of the initial contract can attract a transfer fee from the outgoing contractor — 3% of fair market value in the first year, 2% in the second — with a hardship waiver available. (Engagements can't be transferred at all under the Small Schemes, Specified Two-lot or Commercial Modules.)
What a committee should hold, permanently
Every lever a body corporate has in this relationship — assessing a top-up, weighing a transfer, evaluating performance against the agreed duties — depends on the same asset: a complete record of what was agreed, what was required, and what actually happened. The duties schedule, the remuneration history, the meeting decisions with their explanatory notes, and the scheme's own record of maintenance and works over the years.
Keeping that record against the building — rather than in any one contractor's or manager's systems — is the architecture StrataTrade is built on for the scheme's works and spending: jobs scoped in writing, quotes returned in comparable form, every decision and its reasoning stored permanently with the scheme. Contracts and contractors change on their own timetables; the building's record shouldn't change with them.
This article is general information about Queensland body corporate law, not legal advice. Term limits and procedures are set by your scheme's regulation module, and existing engagements are governed by the module provisions applying when they were made — confirm your scheme's position and obtain legal advice before entering, amending, transferring or voting on caretaking or letting arrangements.