Purpose -Despite the critical issues involving Middle East countries such as war and a drop in currency exchange rates, a large number of students leave their country to pursue a higher education abroad, every year. The purpose of this paper is to understand the difficulties that these students face while conducting their research in a foreign country and in doing so hopes to enhance a greater awareness of the kind of hindrances they face to complete their studies. Design/methodology/approach -The respondents of this qualitative study are PhD students from the Middle East who were studying in a public university in Southeast Asia. This university has recorded an increasing enrollment of international students, particularly from the Middle East in the last few years. Data were collected using a series of unstructured interviews that elicited information on critical incidents that characterized the kind of difficulties students had to face in their research. The data obtained was further analyzed using a qualitative software package -NVivo (QSR International, 10). Findings -Six main themes emerged from the content analysis of the interviews, which are the role of the supervisor, student characteristics, family commitments, financial problems, psychological and research barriers which provide a holistic picture of student perspectives on the factors that affect research progress. While these students might have faced difficulties that might have been cited in existing literature, this paper argues that the respondents have indicated experiencing psychological barriers that were not described in earlier studies, such as the state of mind they were in as a result of being worried for family members due to war or violence in their home countries, drop in currency exchange rates and difficulties in acquiring money due to international sanctions imposed against their countries. Originality/value -This study provides important insights on the factors that affect the progress of PhD students from the Middle East, while at the same time revealing a serious gap in supervisors' role which can contribute to the delay in the research progress of PhD students.

-Rent is a form of revenue obtained by public housing management that is used towards the management and maintenance of public housing. Without rent collection, there is no revenue. It is therefore critical that research on rent arrears be undertaken to understand the extent of the problem. This paper studies the relationship between tenant satisfaction and rent arrears prevalent amongst MBI public housing tenants. Data for the study was obtained through questionnaire distribution on 659 MBI public housing tenants using the strata sampling technique. The study found that tenant satisfaction is related to the rent arrears problem. Although the payment of rent is commonly focused on the ability to pay rent apparent amongst tenants, the fact remains that tenant satisfaction must also be considered by the public housing management in order to increase the payment of rent by tenants.

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Abstract. Housing is a basic need for all. The increasing numbers of population and income had increase in housing demand. Thus, it has led to the construction of apartments to meet the needs of people and to reduce the use of land to build residential buildings. From year to year, maintenance costs of the building are increased. To ensure the maintenance cost for apartment residence maintenance can be reduced, it is important to determine the factor that influence the maintenance cost of the apartment. This paper is to investigate and identify the factors contributing the increase of maintenance costs. The first objective of this study is to determine the factors that affect the cost of maintaining the apartment and meanwhile the second objective is to rank the factors that influence the maintenance cost of the apartment at Johor Baharu Tengah. To achieve the objectives of the study, the questionnaires were distributed to the parties involved in the management of building. Results of this study concluded that there are five factors that influence maintenance cost are the expectations of tenants, building age, building material, failure to execute maintenance at the right time and budget constraints.

Abstract. Affordability reflects the challenges faced by households in balancing the real cost of housing and non housing expenditures against income limitations placed upon the household. Various methods have been introduced to measure housing affordability among households. This study was undertaken to identify the variables influencing tenant affordability to pay rent. Data was obtained through questionnaire distribution on 350 MBI public housing tenants using the strata sampling technique. This study found that only ethnic group variable significantly influenced the ability to pay rent. The study's findings proved that different ethnic groups faced different housing costs liabilities attributable to different socioeconomic status.