German cooperatives: Property right hybrids with strong tenant security

Cooperatives in Germany can be considered a hybrid tenure, which offers a bundle of property rights that lies in between renting and owning. Being a cooperative occupier of a dwelling should allow for more secure occupancy rights than ordinarily available to renters and less secure occupancy rights than ordinarily available to owner-occupiers. This claim is evaluated in terms of how the formal (in the sense of legal) bundles of rights of cooperative housing differ from those in conventional renting and owner-occupation. The text draws from the literature on economic approaches to property rights in an effort to clarify the concept of secure occupancy. Here, this concept is defined as a certain bundle of formal rights associated with occupying a dwelling. In cooperative housing, the bundles of property rights that secure occupancy is defined to exist of turn out to be different from those associated with renting or owning. As an analysis of market friction and efficiency suggests, the property rights are quite secure and clearly defined from a legal point of view.OTBArchitecture and The Built Environmen