Background: The standard of living should be the same for everyone, whether the apartment is placed in an old or new building. The residential properties that were built from 1965 until 1974 is now beginning to become old and in need of restoration. The financial crisis during the nineties contributed to the lack of maintenance on the buildings in Sweden. As the public buildings gets older more and more defects occurs. The coordination and maintenance will therefore have a more significant role in the housing company ́s work.

The increasing interest about how old a building can be, attract much attention. Maintenance as well as the time for new investments in a building is getting more central with this discussion.

Purpose: The purpose with this essay is to explain the models, which are used in the work with maintenance of apartments, and to describe how the investment and maintenance costs affects the lifecycle of a building.

Delimitations: The focus in the essay has not included maintenance of any other type of buildings than residential properties. We have not examined plans of maintenance or energy efficiency of new buildings. We have studied how the companies make a budget for the maintenance costs but not what is included in the numbers.

Research method: To achieve the purpose we have chosen a qualitative method, which means that we interviewed a few units to get deeper information. To help us with the process in collecting empiric we interviewed four large housing companies all of whom work with some kind of plans for maintenance. We have also collected information from literature, mainly in the school library.

We have limited our work by only looking at housing companies settled in Gothenburg with the largest part of residential properties. These companies were relative equal in seize which made their work with maintenance comparable.

Conclusion: The majority of the house companies work with plans of maintenance. A strategy that considers the need of maintenance and avoiding the preemptive work in the buildings is the most profitable way. The plans of maintenance reflect the companies visions and the importance of satisfied customers.