Community housing providers want detailed and reliable information to help them compare costs and performance with their peers.

House Keys, developed by Q Shelter and the NSW Federation of Housing Associations, are benchmarking tools, asked for by the industry. As well as enabling data-driven improvement, House Keys gives governments and lenders additional confidence in the industry.

Use the tools to:

  • benchmark your organisation
  • check you are providing value for money
  • increase the quality of service to tenants
  • highlight areas of high performance
  • identify where you could make savings or improve customer service

How can I get started with House Keys?

To get started, check out our House Keys video and user guide. The Federation has emailed log in details directly to registered subscribers to make sure information is kept confidential.

If your community housing organisation has not yet subscribed to House Keys but wishes to participate, please contact Q Shelter via email

User guide

Getting the most from House Keys

Here are our top 5 suggestions about how your organisation can get the most out of House Keys:

  1. Include a summary of key data and rankings in your board reporting. Make sure it is analysed by a relevant peer group.
  2. Prepare a summary for senior management and staff.
  3. Prepare a summary of results for tenants and discuss the results in more detail with your tenants’ advisory group.
  4. Include improvement areas into next year’s Operations Plan.
  5. Discuss the sectors’ results at a network meeting with your peers – for example with CFO’s, middle managers’ or asset and development managers.