The lack of smart resources management and servicescape strategies within the social housing sector in the late 1970s influenced the rise of successive Governments to consider the restructuring of the traditional ‘cumbersome’ Local Authority based structures and approaches toward more ‘enterprise focussed’ management organisations (Sharp & Jones 2012). This change in central Government policy encouraged Local Authorities to assign through outsourcing their housing stock (including associated asset management services) as part of a Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) via a process of compulsory competitive tendering to Housing Associations and/or set up Housing Trusts to increase the accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness of social housing and healthcare provision in the local community. As part of this modernisation process, all social housing and community care providers (also known as ‘Registered Social Landlords’ - RSLs) became subject to statutory audits, inspections and regulation, and performance management, to ensure the service quality delivery requirements. More recently, however, changes in the legislative framework have introduced choice-based letting policy, putting the customer first, service delivery and additionally RSLs are required to act as ‘Corporate Social Landlords’. These changes have focused RSLs attention on the need to sharpen service responsiveness, especially in the area of housing maintenance management (DETR 2000). Previous research (Holmes 1985; Spedding 1990; Johnston 1993; Stewart & Stoker 1995; Olubodun 1996, 2000, 2001; Sagoo et al. 1996; El-Haram & Horner 2002; Kangwa & Olubodun 2003, 2005; Boussabaine & Kirkham 2004; Jones & Cooper 2007; Prowle 2009; Babangida et al. 2012) has mainly concentrated on analysing maintenance management factors at the micro level; developing maintenance models and framework design for operational level. However, in the social housing sector, there have been no studies undertaken to date that have been focused on housing maintenance strategies – for example, how this is formulated, the key drivers of change and the impact on customer orientated service delivery. The purpose of this study is to identify the critical factors that drive the decision-making process in order to formulate responsive housing maintenance strategies and to develop a decision support model to improve customer service delivery of social housing provision. Research methodology Through a process of qualitative case study, pilot questionnaire surveys, workshops and qualitative in-depth interviews, the research has identified how the housing maintenance strategies are formulated and how social housing providers could enhance customer service delivery. The study comprised four phases in order to reflect the key objectives of the research. The first phase comprised a review of literature on social housing provision in the UK, identifying relevant changes in the legislative framework, an assessment of the challenges faced by RSLs and the key factors influencing performance of social housing provision. This phase also included undertaking a case study based on five different RSLs to examine the ‘real problems’ as to how and to what extent RSLs have adopted their organisation in order to meet the changes and challenges which they now face. The second phase investigated the key service factors impacting on housing maintenance strategy design and development through the use of a pilot study questionnaire directed to the asset managers (participating in the survey) and also included a selection of end users of the services (tenants). This phase identified the differences between the perceptions of service providers and the expectations of the service users. A key feature of this phase entailed conducting a workshop to disseminate findings of the pilot study. The workshop also formed a basis for ‘in-depth’ discussions for identifying the key factors, their descriptions, their interactions with each other, their inter-relationships with the tenant type, and their combined impact on formulating responsive housing maintenance strategy. The third phase of the study entailed eliciting qualitative data from the participants using the Repertory Grid (RG) ‘in-depth’ interview technique - a psychology tool in order to gain a deeper understanding of the core important ‘constructs’ and sub-constructs, their characteristics, their inter-relationships in the design and development of effective housing asset maintenance strategies. The fourth phase of this study entailed the development of a decision support system and the qualitative validation of the relationships found to exist between the constructs examined in phase three together with the testing of the model over a period of two months with four of the participating social housing providers. Findings The key findings arising from this research suggest that the design and development of value for money maintenance strategies within the public housing sector, are not solely based on physical factors related to the age, condition, location, construction type for example, but rather it was found that the majority of the asset management decisions made, were dependent upon a multivariate of key factors. The study identified 52 key factors, which when grouped together formed seven key cluster (Customer risk factors, Asset manager risk factors, Tenancy risk factors, Neighbourhood and community sustainability risk factors, Financial and economic risk factors, continuous service improvement risk factors and corporate risk factors) which are both ‘unique’ and ‘novel’ and are identified as having a direct influence on the formulation of housing maintenance strategy. These factors should not be considered in isolation and are more akin to the business success factors. The business ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (BSC) was evaluated and used as the basis for a ‘best fit’ model which was tested against four RSL to confirm its validity and its appropriateness. The responses obtained from these trials has indicated that the BSC provides a working tool capable of enhancing RSL organisational capabilities and service delivery effectiveness but also able to incorporate customer views regarding service delivery. This research makes major contributions to the existing limited pool of knowledge relating to strategic asset management within social housing sector and in addition, provides an insight into how housing maintenance strategy can be developed to incorporate feedback from customers (tenants) regarding the quality and responsive service delivery. The research also demonstrates the potential value of the BSC approach to the management tool capable of generating a competitive edge in line with government policy which is currently directed towards encouraging RSLs to adopt a commercial business approach to their operations. The research also demonstrates that the adoption of a decision support system in the form of BSC has the potential to provide useful assistance to RSLs intending to move away from the traditional public sector approaches to management (a more private sector orientated) approach to their operations. The research also shows that asset managers experience little difficulty in understanding the principles behind the BSC approach and its application. In addition, the cascading effect of BSC in housing maintenance strategy means that the strategy can be converted into measurable actions at the operational levels thereby providing a direct link between strategy and its implementation. Due to the absence of suitable benchmarking data, score rating derived from the RG were adopted by asset managers. This approach was found to be highly sensitive in assessing service delivery constructs.

<p><strong><em>Introduction</em></strong></p><p>Strategic property management aims at balancing the question of how the needed space is to be secured, maintained, increased or disposed of in a cost effective manner under a mixture of decisions and actions. In recent years, the interest in building maintenance has increased as more and more of the housing stock built after the Second World War is in need of major renovation.  For example, approximately 1 million dwellings were constructed in Sweden in the period 1960-1970. Currently there is growing concern about the expected huge cost of maintaining this aging housing stock especially in the portfolio under municipal ownership. Private housing companies have been shown to report lower maintenance costs than those in the public sector but which are the factors that can explain the apparent differences? During the last decade there has also been a growing trend of governments diversifying themselves of their properties and/or outsourcing the property management. A question of interest is whether it is advantageous to do so and if the maintenance management differs substantially between the government sector and the industrial sector which is seen as business oriented and with a production centred maintenance strategy. In a number of industries there has been a paradigm shift in maintenance whereby the focus is no longer only on availability but reliability and cost effectiveness. New maintenance strategies and policies such as reliability centred maintenance have seen the light of day though without winning ground within property management. Shouldn’t building maintenance be handled in the same way?</p><p>This licentiate thesis focuses on the strategic management of housing properties under public and private ownership as well as the management of special purpose properties in the government and industrial sectors in relation to the ongoing discussion about neglected maintenance. The purpose is to contribute to the process of cost efficient and effective maintenance both in the housing sector and in the management of special purpose properties through underscoring the factors that lead to differences in the maintenance levels in the different categories.</p><p><strong><em>Method</em></strong></p><p>The questions above are analysed through a theoretical part that discusses the concept of maintenance and strategies in building maintenance in relation to other industries. The thesis also contains an empirical part that is based on a survey in the form of a questionnaire on housing maintenance and an econometric analysis of the maintenance costs contained in the financial reports of the municipal and private housing companies as well as a questionnaire on among others how state and county governments as well as industrial companies have secured the availability and management of their special purpose properties.</p><p>The thesis consists of four papers the first two of which are co-authored with Hans Lind. It starts by demarcating the concept of maintenance in the context of standard investment theory followed in paper 2 by a discussion of the term “maintenance strategy” and some stylized facts concerning building maintenance in Sweden. Maintenance strategies and approaches used in some other industries are presented as a background to an analysis of why building maintenance is different. The various factors that affect the maintenance costs reported within the housing sector are surveyed and analysed in paper 3 before the results from a survey on management of special purpose properties in the state and county governments as well industry sector are presented in paper 4. A questionnaire was used to get a broader material about aspects that were difficult to observe directly, including views about underlying factors.</p><p><strong><em>Results</em></strong></p><p>From the perspective of investment theory everything that is usually classified as maintenance is also an investment. The concept of maintenance can in a number of situations be taken to be unnecessary. A review of strategies from other industries reveals a focus on systematic data collection and cost analysis before action is taken and a move away from time scheduled maintenance to acting on the condition of the object. However building maintenance contains a substantial degree of corrective maintenance with a high degree of opportunistic maintenance and detailed maintenance planning is not ideal due to constantly changing needs and demands. An important result is from the surveys and econometric analysis which indicate that the ownership category has a significant effect of approx. 35 per cent on the maintenance costs reported by the housing companies. Furthermore a major factor affecting the cost level in the housing companies is the influence of external factors such as pressure from the media and politicians. The degree of special property ownership in the surveyed companies is high and the probability of the leasing market increasing in the coming five years is very low. According to the respondents there is very little neglected maintenance in the industry in contrast to the government sector especially in the counties. Furthermore, the maintenance plans in the public sector were shorter than those in the private sector.</p><p><strong><em>Discussion</em></strong></p><p>The outstanding result from the surveys is that classification of activities as maintenance or investments in both housing and special purpose properties differs in that the public sector companies lean more towards maintenance than investment in their accounting and have a higher degree of adherence to laid maintenance plans. The distinct difference in the pay-back duration used by the government sector as compared to that in the industry sector in effect lowers the effectiveness of the government sector as the lower required rate of return allows the government sector to have more activities that appear to be profitable.  Maybe the problem to worry about should not be that of neglected maintenance in this sector but that of unprofitable maintenance that should not be carried out. This might also just explain why more activities are classified and dealt with as investments by the industry and not by the county or state companies or the municipal housing companies.</p><p><strong><em>Conclusion</em></strong></p><p>There are strong arguments for saying that building maintenance rationally differs from the kind of maintenance and maintenance planning that could be observed in some of the other industries and the concept of maintenance is much more suitable in a world where there are smaller changes and where it is believed to be possible to know long in advance what is rational to do. The divergence in classification of activities even within the same category and company revealed by the two surveys is problematic as it complicates comparison of activities and services provided as well as benchmarking and it should be given appropriate attention by the managers. This goes to show the great need to use the same well defined concepts in order to benchmark and develop more efficient maintenance management strategies.</p><p><strong><em>Future research</em></strong></p><p>Though each building is unique the goal should be to develop a model that is rational given the specific uncertainties that characterise a building and the institutional system in which decisions are made. The limited size of the sample and the lack of transparency and uniformity in the financial reports constrain the research efforts in this study. However research is needed towards a clearer and more transparent classification of maintenance activities with the purpose of not only reducing the gap between the reported maintenance costs of the companies but also increasing the comparability in the branch. This will help to isolate and possibly limit the external influence in the management of the companies especially in the municipal housing sector.</p>

Introduction Strategic property management aims at balancing the question of how the needed space is to be secured, maintained, increased or disposed of in a cost effective manner under a mixture of decisions and actions. In recent years, the interest in building maintenance has increased as more and more of the housing stock built after the Second World War is in need of major renovation.  For example, approximately 1 million dwellings were constructed in Sweden in the period 1960-1970. Currently there is growing concern about the expected huge cost of maintaining this aging housing stock especially in the portfolio under municipal ownership. Private housing companies have been shown to report lower maintenance costs than those in the public sector but which are the factors that can explain the apparent differences? During the last decade there has also been a growing trend of governments diversifying themselves of their properties and/or outsourcing the property management. A question of interest is whether it is advantageous to do so and if the maintenance management differs substantially between the government sector and the industrial sector which is seen as business oriented and with a production centred maintenance strategy. In a number of industries there has been a paradigm shift in maintenance whereby the focus is no longer only on availability but reliability and cost effectiveness. New maintenance strategies and policies such as reliability centred maintenance have seen the light of day though without winning ground within property management. Shouldn’t building maintenance be handled in the same way? This licentiate thesis focuses on the strategic management of housing properties under public and private ownership as well as the management of special purpose properties in the government and industrial sectors in relation to the ongoing discussion about neglected maintenance. The purpose is to contribute to the process of cost efficient and effective maintenance both in the housing sector and in the management of special purpose properties through underscoring the factors that lead to differences in the maintenance levels in the different categories. Method The questions above are analysed through a theoretical part that discusses the concept of maintenance and strategies in building maintenance in relation to other industries. The thesis also contains an empirical part that is based on a survey in the form of a questionnaire on housing maintenance and an econometric analysis of the maintenance costs contained in the financial reports of the municipal and private housing companies as well as a questionnaire on among others how state and county governments as well as industrial companies have secured the availability and management of their special purpose properties. The thesis consists of four papers the first two of which are co-authored with Hans Lind. It starts by demarcating the concept of maintenance in the context of standard investment theory followed in paper 2 by a discussion of the term “maintenance strategy” and some stylized facts concerning building maintenance in Sweden. Maintenance strategies and approaches used in some other industries are presented as a background to an analysis of why building maintenance is different. The various factors that affect the maintenance costs reported within the housing sector are surveyed and analysed in paper 3 before the results from a survey on management of special purpose properties in the state and county governments as well industry sector are presented in paper 4. A questionnaire was used to get a broader material about aspects that were difficult to observe directly, including views about underlying factors. Results From the perspective of investment theory everything that is usually classified as maintenance is also an investment. The concept of maintenance can in a number of situations be taken to be unnecessary. A review of strategies from other industries reveals a focus on systematic data collection and cost analysis before action is taken and a move away from time scheduled maintenance to acting on the condition of the object. However building maintenance contains a substantial degree of corrective maintenance with a high degree of opportunistic maintenance and detailed maintenance planning is not ideal due to constantly changing needs and demands. An important result is from the surveys and econometric analysis which indicate that the ownership category has a significant effect of approx. 35 per cent on the maintenance costs reported by the housing companies. Furthermore a major factor affecting the cost level in the housing companies is the influence of external factors such as pressure from the media and politicians. The degree of special property ownership in the surveyed companies is high and the probability of the leasing market increasing in the coming five years is very low. According to the respondents there is very little neglected maintenance in the industry in contrast to the government sector especially in the counties. Furthermore, the maintenance plans in the public sector were shorter than those in the private sector. Discussion The outstanding result from the surveys is that classification of activities as maintenance or investments in both housing and special purpose properties differs in that the public sector companies lean more towards maintenance than investment in their accounting and have a higher degree of adherence to laid maintenance plans. The distinct difference in the pay-back duration used by the government sector as compared to that in the industry sector in effect lowers the effectiveness of the government sector as the lower required rate of return allows the government sector to have more activities that appear to be profitable.  Maybe the problem to worry about should not be that of neglected maintenance in this sector but that of unprofitable maintenance that should not be carried out. This might also just explain why more activities are classified and dealt with as investments by the industry and not by the county or state companies or the municipal housing companies. Conclusion There are strong arguments for saying that building maintenance rationally differs from the kind of maintenance and maintenance planning that could be observed in some of the other industries and the concept of maintenance is much more suitable in a world where there are smaller changes and where it is believed to be possible to know long in advance what is rational to do. The divergence in classification of activities even within the same category and company revealed by the two surveys is problematic as it complicates comparison of activities and services provided as well as benchmarking and it should be given appropriate attention by the managers. This goes to show the great need to use the same well defined concepts in order to benchmark and develop more efficient maintenance management strategies. Future research Though each building is unique the goal should be to develop a model that is rational given the specific uncertainties that characterise a building and the institutional system in which decisions are made. The limited size of the sample and the lack of transparency and uniformity in the financial reports constrain the research efforts in this study. However research is needed towards a clearer and more transparent classification of maintenance activities with the purpose of not only reducing the gap between the reported maintenance costs of the companies but also increasing the comparability in the branch. This will help to isolate and possibly limit the external influence in the management of the companies especially in the municipal housing sector.

Planerat fastighetsunderhåll bör ske på ett strategiskt och genomtänkt sätt. Om detta inte görs medför det allt som oftast att underhållsarbetet sker ostrukturerat med missnöjda hyresgäster som resultat. Detta arbete fördjupar sig i det planerade underhållet för fastigheter och närmare bestämt det inre underhållet, underhållet av lägenheter, som i allra högsta grad påverkar hyresgästerna.  Syftet med denna uppsats är att bidra med ökad kunskap om hur bostadsbolag arbetar med strategiska underhållsfrågor som direkt påverkar kundernas boende. De frågor som studeras är hur kommunala aktörer arbetar med inre underhåll och tillval samt hur det påverkar lönsamheten och kundnöjdheten i företagen? Arbetet har begränsats till att endast ta med kommunala bostadsbolag med ett minimum på 700 lägenheter i beståndet i examensarbetet. Den enda geografiska avgränsning som gjorts är att studien görs inom Sveriges gränser, bostadsbolagen som undersöks ligger alltså utspridda över hela landet. De olika strategierna för lägenhetsunderhåll har effekter som påverkar olika delar av ett bostadsbolag. Beroende på om det är fastighetsägare eller hyresgäst som bestämmer när ett underhåll ska ske kan man som bolag mer eller mindre styra planeringen och därmed kostnaderna för underhållet. Stordriftsfördelar kan gå förlorade och göra underhållsarbetet dyrare än det skulle behöva vara eller så kan val av modell ha direkta skattemässiga effekter för ett företag. ”Tjänsteforskningsfältet service management sammanfattar en ledarskapsstrategi som sätter kundrelationer i fokus via en kundorienterad servicestruktur och ett anpassat serviceerbjudande”. Att sträva efter att utveckla och erbjuda tjänster med toppkvalitet är något som alla organisationer kan och borde göra. Oavsett bransch så finner man i litteraturen skäl och motiv för att service management och tjänsternas kvalitet är något som man bör arbeta med. För offentliga bostadsbolag presenterar Blomé följande tre argument som pekar på att bostadsföretag kan vinna på att använda principer från service management: Kunder är särskilt beroende av bostadsbolagets tjänster eftersom man är beroende av olika sociala band till omgivningen. Det betyder att kunder inte lika lätt som andra tjänstemarknader kan byta leverantör från en dag till en annan. Bostadsbolaget är särskilt beroende av en god relation till hyresgästen eftersom det är svårt att avbryta ofördelaktiga relationer.  En bofast kund är oftast en lönsam affär för bostadsbolaget med mindre kostnader för bland annat uthyrning. För att svara på de frågor som studien ställer insamlas uppgifter om vad bostadsbolagen upplever kring de olika modellerna och tjänsterna. Studien kommer därför att dels bestå av en enkätundersökning dels semi-strukturerade intervjuer. Detta innebär att valet av metod både är kvalitativt och kvantitativt vilket litteraturen benämner som ”mixed-methods”. De huvudsakliga resultaten som tas upp i slutsatsen är följande: - Oavsett hur man väljer att definiera de olika modellerna så kan det konstateras att definitionen av dem ser väldigt olika ut inom branschen. Vad bolagen har uppgett att de arbetar med för modell kontra vad de faktiskt arbetar med skiljer sig i många fall.Teorin beskriver en allmän problematik kring begreppen och definitioner av begreppen när det kommer till underhåll, samma problematik verkar även finnas kring underhållsmodellerna. - Periodiskt lägenhetsunderhåll leder till att man gör betydligt fler underhållsåtgärder jämfört med de andra modellerna.Frekvens tas upp som en av de faktorer som driver kostnaderna avseende underhåll, rimligtvis borde då även de bolag som arbetar med denna modell ha en högre underhållskostnad jämfört med andra bolag - Hyresgäststyrt lägenhetsunderhåll är den modell som genererar nöjdast kunder samtidigt som den är minst lönsam.Kundnöjdhet bygger enligt teorin på en serviceorienterad organisation och denna modell, som är mer kund- och serviceorienterad, bekräftar teorin om ökad kundnöjdhet. Ur intervjun framgår även att det till stor del beror på de hyresrabatter som hyresgästerna har möjlighet att få. Att den inte är särskilt lönsam kan dels bero på hyresrabatterna dels den hyresreglering som råder. - Oberoende av hur många tillval ett bostadsbolag har i sitt sortiment så ser det ekonomiska utfallet ungefär likadant ut men för kundnöjdheten gäller att ju fler tillval, desto nöjdare kunder. Denna studie har fokuserat på de kommunala bostadsbolagen och hur de upplever de olika modellerna för inre underhåll. Muyingo (2017) studerade de skillnader som förekom mellan kommunala aktörer och privata aktörer avseende drift- och underhållskostnader, det skulle även vara intressant att studera om och i sånt fall hur det skiljer sig avseende det inre underhållet mellan dessa två olika aktörer. Hur skiljer sig de olika aktörernas sätt att arbeta med inre underhåll och varför, samt vilka konsekvenser ser man av det? / Planned property maintenance should be done in a strategic and thoughtful manner. If this is not done, it usually happens that the maintenance work is done unstructured with dissatisfied tenants as a result. The focus in this thesis is planned maintenance of housing and in particular the maintenance of apartments, which most affect the tenants. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute with increased knowledge of how housing companies work with strategic maintenance that directly affect customers' accommodation. The issues studied are how municipal actors work on internal maintenance and customer options, and how it affects profitability and customer satisfaction in companies? The work has been limited to include only municipal housing companies, with a minimum of 700 apartments in the stock, in the degree project. The only geographical demarcation that has been made is that the study is conducted within Sweden's borders, the housing companies surveyed are thus scattered throughout the country. The various housing maintenance strategies have effects that affect different parts of a housing company. Depending on whether a property owner or tenant determines when a maintenance is to be done, companies can more or less control the planning and, consequently, the cost of maintenance. Either the economies of scale may be lost and maintenance work more expensive than it would be or the models could have direct tax effects for a company. "The research field service management summarizes a leadership strategy that focuses on customer relations through a customer-oriented service structure and a customized service offering". Striving to develop and offer top quality services is something that all organizations can and should do. Regardless of the industry, the literature finds reasons and motives that service management and quality of service are something that should be worked with. For public housing companies, Blomé presents the following three arguments which point out that housing companies can benefit from using principles of service management: Customers are particularly dependent on housing company services because they depend on different social ties to the environment. This means that customers can not change supplier from one day to another as easily as other service markets. The housing company is particularly dependent on a good relationship with the tenant because it is difficult to cancel unfavorable relationships. A long-standing customer is usually a profitable business for the housing company, with less costs for renting. In order to answer the questions asked in the thesis, information about what the housing companies perceive about the different models and services is collected. The study will therefore consist of a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. This means that the choice of method is both qualitative and quantitative, which literature refers to as "mixed-methods". The main results listed in the conclusion are as follows: - No matter how you choose to define the different models, it can be noted that the definition of them looks very different in the industry. What the companies have said they are working on for model versus what they actually work with differs in many cases. The theory describes a general problem of the concepts and definitions of the concepts when it comes to maintenance, the same problem seems to exist around the maintenance models. - The model Periodic apartment maintenance results in significantly more maintenance than the other models. Frequency is brought up as one of the factors that affect maintenance costs, reasonably those companies working with this model should have a higher maintenance cost compared to other companies. - Tenant-based apartment maintenance is the model that generates most satisfied customers while at the same time it is the least profitable model. Customer satisfaction is based on the theory of a service-oriented organization and this model, which is more customer and service oriented, confirms the theory of increased customer satisfaction. The interview also shows that it largely depends on the rental discounts that the tenants have the opportunity to receive. The fact that it is not particularly profitable can be partly due to rental discounts and partly to the rental regulations that exist. - Regardless of the number of customer options a housing company has in its range, the financial outcome looks similar, but for customer satisfaction, the more options, the happier customers. This thesis has focused on the municipal housing companies and how they experience the different models of apartment maintenance. Muyingo (2017) studied the differences between municipal actors and private actors regarding operating and maintenance costs, it would also be interesting to study if, and in that case how it differs from the apartment maintenance between these two different actors. How do the different actors differ in the way they work with internal maintenance and why, and also what are the consequences of that?

Several studies and government reports have indicated that a large number of apartments in Sweden built during the 1960s and 1970s require extensive refurbishment and that there is concern that some companies in the rental housing sector and in the tenant-owner cooperative (TOC) sector may have difficulties carrying out the needed activities. The overall purpose of the thesis is to increase the understanding of the factors that influence the decisions made within the multi­ faceted property management of multifamily housing in Sweden which would mitigate some of the shortcomings. Econometric analysis and semi-structured interviews as well as questionnaires carried out within the TOC sector as well as the public and the private rental housing sectors provide the basis of the conclusions arrived at. The aim is to contribute to raising efficiency in maintenance and property management within the housing sector in Sweden. The major conclusions presented in the thesis are that: maintenance as a concept is unnecessary from a decision-making perspective as the concept of investment embraces all the relevant decisions; maintenance models in manufacturing industries could be applied within the housing sector but building maintenance is different and should be grounded on a strategy that allows for the continuous adjustment of maintenance plans based on a regularly up-to-date decision support system in the company or TOC; reported maintenance costs within the municipal (public) and the private rental sectors in Sweden continuously diverge mainly due to principal-agency issues of a socio-political character, in the form of political involvement in the operations of public housing companies, as well as the way companies define maintenance together with the timing of the maintenance measures; hidden incentives in the form of cooperative members, managers or service providers that seek short term gains together with the lack of a long-term perspective in the decision-making as well as a high turnover rate of committee members are major challenges to efficient property management within the Swedish TOC sector. Similarly, the information asymmetry between the professionals (constructors as well as service providers) and the amateur decision-makers in the managing committees, especially in cooperatives with newly constructed buildings, is a substantial source of losses in efficiency within the operations of the TOCs. Major contributions of the thesis are that: it promotes the view of maintenance as an investment and highlights the possibility of cost saving through the linking together of several measures as well as the challenges involved; it points to the need within the housing sector for better decision support tools as well as knowledge transfer and sharing; it calls for the government to promote policies that would reduce the degree of information asymmetry between the procurers of services within the TOC sector and the construction companies as well as other service providers. A requirement of formal competence and certification could be a step towards increasing the degree of qualified decision making and efficiency in property management within the housing sector. How this could be implemented nationwide in the different housing sectors is an issue worth further investigation. / Flera studier och statliga rapporter har visat att ett stort antal lägenheter i Sverige som byggdes under 1960- och 1970-talet kräver omfattande renovering och att det finns oro för att vissa företag i bostadshyressektorn och i bostadsrättssektorn kan ha svårigheter att utföra nödvändiga åtgärder. Det övergripande syftet med avhandlingen är att öka förståelsen av de faktorer som påverkar beslutfattning inom den mångfacetterad fastighetsförvaltning av flerfamiljshus i Sverige, vilket skulle mildra några av bristerna. Ekonometriska analyser och semistrukturerade intervjuer samt enkäter som genomföddes inom Brf sektorn samt den offentliga och den privata hyresbostadssektorn utgör grunden för de slutsatser som dragits. Syftet är att bidra till att höja effektiviteten i underhåll och fastighetsförvaltning inom bostadssektorn i Sverige. De viktigaste slutsatserna i avhandlingen är att: underhållet som begrepp är onödigt från ett beslutsperspektiv eftersom begreppet investering omfattar alla relevanta beslut; underhållsstrategier i tillverkningsindustrin skulle kunna tillämpas inom bostadssektorn men byggnadsunderhåll skiljer sig och bör grundas på en strategi som gör det möjligt för kontinuerlig anpassning av underhållsplaner baserat på ett reguljärt uppdaterad beslutsstödsystem i företaget eller TOC; redovisade underhållskostnader inom den kommunala och den privata hyresbostadssektorn i Sverige kontinuerligt avviker från varandra främst på grund av principal-agent frågor av sociopolitisk karaktär, i form av politisk inblandning i verksamheten inom de allmännyttiga bostadsföretag, och hur företag definierar underhåll samt tidpunkten för underhållsåtgärderna; effektiv fastighetsförvaltning inom den svenska Brf sektorn kompliceras av olika aktörer (kooperativets medlemmar, che fer eller tjänsteleverantörer) med dolda incitament, avsaknaden av ett långsiktigt perspektiv i beslutsfattandet, en hög omsättning av kommittémedlemmar samt informationsasymmetri mellan yrkesverksamma (konstruktörer samt tjänsteleverantörer) och amatör beslutsfattare inom Brfer, särskilt i kooperativ med nybyggda hus, vilket utgör en stor källa till effektivitetsförluster inom verksamheten i Brf sektorn. Avhandlingens viktiga bidrag är att: det främjar synen på underhåll som en investering och understryker möjligheten till kostnadsbesparingar genom att knyta ihop flera åtgärder samt de utmaningar som kan finnas; det pekar på behovet inom bostadssektorn för bättre beslutsunderlagsverktyg liksom kunskapsöverföring och delning samt uppmuntrar den regeringen att främja en politik som skulle minska graden av informationsasymmetri mellan beställare av tjänster inom Brf sektorn och byggföretag samt andra tjänsteleverantörer. Ett krav på formell kompetens och certifiering kan vara ett steg mot att öka graden av kvalificerad beslutsfattande och effektivitet inom fastighetsförvaltning i bostadssektorn. Hur detta skulle kunna genomföras i hela landet i de olika bostadssektorerna är en fråga som ytterligare skulle kunna undersökas. / <p>QC 20160223</p>