AAMI, Explained: The One Number That Prices Your Business
Published 9 August 2026 · 4 minute read
$1,838
Median AAMI per property, eastern seaboard
Real Estate Dynamics, FY2025
2.5×–3.5×
The multiple applied to annual management income at sale
Australian rent roll market commentary, FY2025
5–8%
Typical management fee range, plus fixed fees
AAMI gets thrown around in every rent roll conversation and defined in almost none of them. It's a shame, because it's the one number that converts your daily fee decisions into your eventual sale price.
What does AAMI actually mean?
AAMI is average annual management income per property: the recurring income your agency earns from a management in a year, averaged across the book. Take everything a property reliably generates — the percentage management fee plus the recurring fixed fees — annualise it, and divide by your number of managements.
It is a per-property number, which is the point. Total revenue tells you how big you are. AAMI tells you how good the book is, one management at a time.
What counts in AAMI and what doesn't?
In: the management fee percentage on rent collected, plus recurring charges like administration or statement fees — income that arrives because the management exists and keeps existing.
Out, or at least discounted heavily by buyers: one-off letting fees, lease renewal fees tied to tenant turnover, and anything episodic. Buyers pay the multiple on income they can bank on next year. Padding AAMI with lumpy fees is the fastest way to have a due diligence team re-cut your number downwards, in writing, in front of you.
Why is AAMI the number buyers anchor on?
Because the whole valuation is AAMI times managements times the multiple. Rent rolls transact at roughly 2.5×–3.5× annual management income, so every dollar of genuine AAMI is worth two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half dollars at settlement.
That conversion rate is what makes AAMI different from every other KPI on your dashboard. Improve response times and you feel better. Improve AAMI by $100 across a 200-property book and you've added somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000 to your exit price. Few decisions in an agency have arithmetic that direct.
The eastern seaboard benchmark, and what to do with it
Median AAMI sits around $1,838 per property on the eastern seaboard. Treat it as a diagnostic, not a target. If you're materially below it, work out whether that's your market's rent levels or your own discounting — they need different responses.
Management fees typically range 5–8% of rent plus fixed fees. The gap between the agencies at the bottom and top of that range is rarely about service quality. It's about who blinked first when an owner asked for a discount, and whether anyone ever went back to reprice.
Fee discipline is AAMI discipline
Every waived fee is permanent until someone makes it not. The contrarian bit: winning a management at a discounted fee often destroys more value than losing the management, because the discount spreads. Owners talk. Your own BDM starts quoting the discounted rate as the rate.
Tracking AAMI monthly makes discounting visible while it's still one owner, not a norm. Indium computes AAMI from the live ledger — actual fees charged, not the rate card — so the number reflects what you really earn, and the valuation view shows what each fee decision does to the sale price. That tends to stiffen spines in fee negotiations.
What moves AAMI, practically?
Three levers, in order of speed. Fee integrity first: audit every management agreement against what you actually charge — books quietly leak fees through ad-hoc discounts that outlive the reason they were given. Ancillary income second: letting fees, lease renewals and inspection charges that your agreement entitles you to but your invoicing forgets. Rent third, and slowest: market-rate reviews at every renewal lift AAMI mechanically, because most management fees are a percentage of rent collected.
The discipline is measuring it per property rather than as a blended average. A healthy-looking average AAMI routinely hides a bottom quartile of managements priced years ago — and those are either a repricing conversation or, honestly, managements a buyer will discount anyway.
Quick answers
What does AAMI stand for?
Average annual management income — the recurring income a management generates per year, averaged across the rent roll. It's the base number buyers multiply to price a rent roll.
What is a good AAMI in Australia?
The eastern seaboard median was about $1,838 per property in FY2025 (Real Estate Dynamics). Whether that's achievable for you depends on local rents and your fee structure.
Do letting fees count towards AAMI?
Generally no. AAMI is recurring management income. One-off letting and leasing fees are episodic, and buyers discount or exclude them when pricing a rent roll.
Keep going
General information for Australian agencies, current at the date above — not legal or financial advice. Verify obligations against AUSTRAC guidance and your own advisers.