Before I worked in the industry I would have agreed with Sanj.
But here is my un-researched, untested and unproven opinion:
Property management is a service and it also has a geographic restriction. For example, if there was a shortage of loan assessors in WA and there were heaps in VIC. The wage and thus the price of loan assessors went up, the simple solution would be to email the loan through to VIC and then back. Quick fix and it would resolve the increasing cost. However, you can’t exactly get a Property Condition Report done in VIC.
Now the main costs to property management companies are wages. I can guarantee, anyone who is a property manager in Perth back in 09 could easily get a job as a cleaner up at the mine sites earning $70k pa. This puts wage pressure on PM employers and thus increases there bottom line, so they pass this onto consumers.
If you want to see an explanation of why wages and thus prices haven’t come down, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_(economics)
The other costs of a PM agency are leasing, essential services and advertising. These also are intrinsically high in WA to the rest of the state.
Here is an article giving a backing to the high costs of doing business in WA:
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&s...49HyDQ&usg=AFQjCNGLVyixkIkQF6UsW2wrBN2Kveahrw
I would like to say, it’s all a big bad rip off in WA and some property managers should come in and undercut everyone and offer amazing service (kind of like what Sanj is alluding to) but guess what? If that was the cases it would have happened already and they would have 90%+ market share.