Improvement-led home maintenance strategies and quality expectations: The significance of owner-occupiers' prior knowledge of house defects on upkeep decisions

Purpose - This paper seeks to explore the satisfaction rating associated with the repair and maintenance of 34 most occurring house defects remedied by owner-occupiers selected from a stratified random sample.

 Design/methodology/approach - The study targeted over 1,200 owner-occupiers from 12 local authority wards; these were identified on the basis of the Ward Index of Multiple Deprivation. The sample also included some neighbourhoods recently designated for improvement under the Urban Renewal's Single Regeneration Budget initiative within the Northwest of England. 

Findings - Through the use of nonparametric statistical techniques, the paper argues that owner-occupiers' expectation of the quality of maintenance works is a derivative dichotomy of unrelated decision constructs: on the one hand is the prior knowledge of the severity of house defects which, in turn, impacts on the follow-on repair strategies and maintenance quality expectations. On the other hand are the projected improvements as perceived in terms of the added value to a dwelling vis-à-vis the principal methods of remediation enshrined within the broader renewal initiatives.

Originality/value - Overall, the results suggest that expectations on maintenance quality ought to be defined as owner-occupiers' perception of desired standard of work relative to the projected market value of their property. The study further concludes that, when all the notable variations in the satisfaction rating on follow-on maintenance strategies and expectations are considered together, it is the perceived increase in the value of a property - following improvement works under the urban renewal programme - that stands out as the main influencing criterion.