Editing Cooperative (section)

==== Housing cooperative ====
{{Main|Housing cooperative|Building cooperative}}

A [[housing cooperative]] is a legal mechanism for ownership of housing where residents either own [[Share (finance)|shares]] (share capital co-op) reflecting their equity in the cooperative's real estate or have membership and occupancy rights in a [[not-for-profit]] cooperative (non-share capital co-op), and they underwrite their housing through paying subscriptions or rent.

Housing cooperatives come in three basic equity structures
* In '''market-rate housing cooperatives''', members may sell their shares in the cooperative whenever they like for whatever price the market will bear, much like any other residential property. Market-rate co-ops are very common in New York City.
* '''Limited equity housing cooperatives''', which are often used by [[affordable housing]] developers, allow members to own some equity in their home, but limit the sale price of their membership share to that which they paid.
* '''Group equity''' or '''zero-equity housing cooperatives''' do not allow members to own equity in their residences and often have rental agreements well below market rates.

Members of a building cooperative (in Britain known as a self-build housing cooperative) pool resources to build housing, normally using a high proportion of their own labor. When the building is finished, each member is the sole owner of a homestead, and the cooperative may be dissolved.

This collective effort was at the origin of many of Britain's [[building societies]], which however, developed into "permanent" [[Mutual organization|mutual]] [[savings and loan]] organisations, a term which persisted in some of their names (such as the former ''Leeds Permanent''). Nowadays such self-building may be financed using a step-by-step [[mortgage loan|mortgage]] which is released in stages as the building is completed. The term may also refer to worker cooperatives in the building trade.