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A housing cooperative, or co-op, is a legal entity, usually a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinctive form of home ownership that have many characteristics that differ from other residential arrangements such as single family home ownership, condominiums and renting.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Characteristics of Housing Cooperatives )〕 The corporation is membership-based, with membership granted by way of a share purchase in the cooperative. Each shareholder in the legal entity is granted the right to occupy one housing unit. A primary advantage of the housing cooperative is the pooling of the members’ resources so that their buying power is leveraged, thus lowering the cost per member in all the services and products associated with home ownership. Another key element is that the members, through their elected representatives, screen and select who may live in the cooperative, unlike any other form of home ownership.〔 Housing cooperatives fall into two general tenure categories: non-ownership (referred to as non-equity or continuing) and ownership (referred to as equity or strata). In non-equity cooperatives, occupancy rights are sometimes granted subject to an occupancy agreement, which is similar to a lease. In equity cooperatives, occupancy rights are sometimes granted by way of the purchase agreements and legal instruments registered on the title. The corporation's articles of incorporation and bylaws as well as occupancy agreement specifies the cooperative's rules. The word ''cooperative'' is also used to describe a non-share capital co-op model in which fee-paying members obtain the right to occupy a bedroom and share the communal resources of a house that is owned by a cooperative organization. Such is the case with student cooperatives in some college and university communities across the United States. ==Legal status== As a legal entity, a co-op can contract with other companies or hire individuals to provide it with services, such as a maintenance contractor or a building manager. It can also hire employees, such as a manager or a caretaker, to deal with specific things that volunteers may prefer not to do or may not be good at doing, such as electrical maintenance. However, as many housing cooperatives strive to run self-sufficiently, as much work as possible is completed by its members. In non-equity cooperatives and in limited equity cooperatives,〔Mallin, Barry. ("Limited Equit Cooperatives: A Legal Handbook" ) New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, ndg〕 a shareholder in a co-op does not own real estate, but a share of the legal entity that does own real estate.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=A New York Co-op Apartment Lawyer: Co-op Boards, Shareholders, Managing Agents, and Commercial Tenants )〕 Co-operative ownership is quite distinct from condominiums where people own individual units and have little say in who moves into the other units.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Condo vs. Co-op Apartment: The New York City Real Estate Question for Buyers, Sellers and Investors )〕 Because of this, most jurisdictions have developed separate legislation, similar to laws that regulate companies, to regulate how co-ops are operated and the rights and obligations of shareholders. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「housing cooperative」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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