A safe, healthy and pleasant living environment starts with good property management. With this in mind, the Housing Authority has entrusted the overall management of its public rental housing (PRH) and ancillary facilities to its executive arm, the Housing Department (HD). Given the magnitude of the PRH stock, HD has to outsource the property management of some of its PRH estates to property services agents (PSAs) in a bid to enhance service quality and cost effectiveness. Currently the management of about 60% of its rental estates has been outsourced to PSAs, while the rest are directly managed by the HD.

The PSAs perform a full range of property management duties including cleaning, security, rent collection, minor maintenance and repairs, as well as improvement works. They have to set up property management offices at the outsourced estates to provide customer services to the tenants directly. They also provide preliminary frontline tenancy services such as explaining housing policies and application procedures, distributing standard forms and notification letters, assisting tenants in completing forms and applications, arranging direct contacts between tenants and HD staff, etc. The performance of PSAs depends very much on the staff training and knowledge they have. This certificate programme gives them a thorough briefing and training of what the standards of performance they need to meet and the skills to perform the duties.