As in most countries in the post-Soviet region, housing construction and housing stock management have been a major challenge for both countries – Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – ever since their independence in 1991.Thisis due to a variety of facts: First, apartments – formerly state-owned as well as maintained by the state-were privatized once the countries became independent of the Soviet Union. Thus, residential buildings in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are typically built before the 1990s as industrially prefabricated and large multi-apartment buildings. The appearance is influenced by the architectural standards in Soviet times and can be found in similar technical design and wide distribution in all countries of the post-Soviet region, in the south at the Black Sea as well as in the north in the Baltic States, east of the Odra River as well as in the Caucasus.