A review on outsourcing of property management services of public rental housing estates in Hong Kong

Abstract

The Hong Kong Housing Authority (HA) is a statutory body responsible for the provision of Public Rental Housing to the general public in need. The Housing Department (HD) is the executive arm of the HA to provide the tenancy management services and the property management services to the PRH residents. To enlarge the cost competitiveness, the HA has decided to implement the outsourcing arrangement since 2001. Therefore, the HD could provide the property managements and maintenance services at same level of quality to the PRH residents by the property services agents with a lower cost. This research focuses on assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of the outsourcing arrangement implemented by the HA in last 18 years. The ultimate goal of this research is to assist both the HD and the PSAs to improve their service quality. Two stage of the descriptive survey method has been carried out: distribution of questionnaires and follow up interviews with the HD staff and PSA staff. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses of the survey showed that there was no significant difference on the quality between the HD’s services and the PSAs’ services. However, the result of the survey showed that there is still room for improvement of the maintenance services provided by the PSAs. In fact, the quality of PSAs’ services has also involved in the HD’s monitoring system. The long-term partnership relationship between the HD and the PSAs has its advantages and disadvantages. From the point of view from the supervision system, the good relationship has weakened the effectiveness of HD’s monitoring. Therefore, this paper has provided some recommendations for a reference.