ABSTRACT
Customisation of living space is intrinsically valuable and has been supported by the increasingly wider application of customised housing. With customised housing, customers have wider choices beyond the monolithic decision in traditional housing. Given the additional choices for customers, developers are facing new challenges in deciding different business alternatives, such as what is the right mix of customisable attributes offered to customers, range of choices etc. This chapter addresses this challenge from the economic perspective by developing a decision framework based on discounted cash flows. To simplify the problem, Customised Apartment (CA) is selected to neutralise the geographic location factor. This chapter presents a framework for developers to evaluate the economic feasibility of CA with considerations of different customisation schemes within a unified framework. Thus developers can pro vide choices not only catered to customer needs, but also avoid complexity and redun dancy. Furthermore, a case study of high-rise apartments is presented to discuss the operating window of CA in a specific business environment by demonstrating how some critical factors can be incorporated into the framework.
