Since the housing reform in 1998, high-rise residential buildings have become the main product of commercial housing supply in China. They have now formed a large-scale construction volume, and a batch of early-built high-rise buildings is about to enter a period of major repairs. The high maintenance costs and demolition and renewal costs have become urgent issues that must be addressed. This article analyzes the current development status and challenges of high-rise residential buildings in China, exploring full lifecycle management and maintenance mechanisms for high-rise residential buildings to improve maintenance and management levels and avoid or effectively address the above issues. The preliminary research results were published in China Real Estate Finance, Issue 4, 2023. The authors are the research team from the Urban Development and Land Policy Research Center of Peking University–Lincoln Institute, with members including Liu Zhi, Liu Xiuying, Li Yunhe, and Liu Wei. During the research period, this article received guidance from experts such as Feng Jun, Li Xiaojiang, Chen Yong, and Yi Chengdong, for which we express our gratitude.

This paper first clarifies the definition of high-rise residential buildings, including "buildings with 7 floors or more, or residential buildings with a height greater than 24 meters," within the scope of study. As China's urbanization accelerates, the contradictory effect of market demand and land scarcity has led more and more Chinese families to choose to live in high-rise residences. The development of high-rise residential buildings also shows characteristics such as "an increasing proportion of residential buildings," "an increasing number of floors in buildings," and "the scale is most prominent in megacities, with a significant proportion in small and medium-sized cities." Facing the dual pressures of "population aging and building aging," high-rise residential buildings face multiple challenges such as difficult management and maintenance costs, difficulty in renewing repair funds, and inconvenient access. Regarding the management and maintenance issues of high-rise residential buildings, the main recommendations proposed in this paper are as follows:

(1) Establish a full lifecycle management mechanism for high-rise residential buildings to extend their service life. Implement phased necessary management work for high-rise residential buildings, ensuring effective coordination at every stage to form a management chain. Specific content includes: inventory of high-rise residential stock, monitoring and risk warning of high-rise residential conditions, regular maintenance and management of high-rise residential buildings, and renewal planning for high-rise residential buildings. The establishment of a full lifecycle management mechanism for high-rise residential buildings requires the joint participation and joint efforts of owners, property management, and the government, ultimately achieving a long-term mechanism for housing safety management.

(2) Improve the deposit and operation mechanism for maintenance funds of high-rise residential buildings to provide financial support for their maintenance. First, enforce legal responsibilities for delayed and refusal to pay residential maintenance funds. For example, relevant departments can file and exercise lien rights on homeowners with outstanding payments, restrict the sale and inheritance of the residence until the government recovers the outstanding payments, and the relevant properties will not be allowed to enter the market for transactions. Additionally, flexible fund deposit mechanisms can be established to avoid long-term accumulation and depreciation, while timely updating maintenance funding needs and reasonably using dividends generated from operating capital.

(3) Explore the establishment of a housing pension system for high-rise residential buildings. Drawing on the multi-pillar pension system and housing provident fund system, establish China's housing pension system. Among these, the first pillar is the mandatory housing public pension. The funds mainly come from special residential maintenance funds and local government fiscal funds, used to cover daily basic and general repair costs for houses in all residential communities citywide, as well as part of the major repair costs. The second pillar is commercial housing pension insurance. Voluntary purchases by community units are used to supplement the insufficient capacity of public pensions to pay for major housing repairs. The institutional design of housing pensions should emphasize bottom-up exploration to increase the enthusiasm of owners, property management, and other stakeholders for residential maintenance and management.

Promoting the longevity of residential buildings is an urgent task for solving the problem of existing residential use in China and the future development of housing. It is also a major task in shifting China's construction from resource-consuming to asset-sustaining. Therefore, improving the maintenance and management level of high-rise residential buildings is imperative, such as involving construction professionals, establishing mandatory maintenance mechanisms, standardizing property management practices, and strengthening government supervision and guidance. Through joint efforts, we aim to raise awareness and capabilities of maintenance and management of high-rise residential buildings across all sectors, achieve sustainable development of high-rise housing, and meet the public's demand for high-quality housing.

For detailed papers, see:

Research .pdf on the Full Lifecycle Management and Maintenance of High-rise Residential Buildings in China