A housing cooperative is a legal mechanism for ownership of housing where residents either own shares (share capital co-op) reflecting their equity in the co-operative's real estate, or have membership and occupancy rights in a not-for-profit co-operative (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 co-ops, members can sell their shares in the co-op whenever they like for whatever price the market will bear, much like any other residential property. Market-rate co-ops are very popular in New York City. Limited Equity co-ops, 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 bought in for. Provisions are often made for inflation, or improvements made on the building. The purpose of this is to prevent co-op members from using their share in the co-op to speculate on rising real estate prices, and to keep the price of a membership share affordable to future members. In the third structure, called "Shared Equity" by NASCO, one of the proponents of this model, individual members do not build up equity in the co-op - the co-op is not owned by its members, but by itself.

Housing cooperatives may occupy various types of physical structure. Co-ops can be structured as individual housing units grouped together, such as in an apartment building, or they can be groups of people living together in one housing unit, as an alternative to the traditional family structure.

Building cooperative

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

This collective effort was at the origin of many of Britain's building societies, which however developed into "permanent" 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 which is released in stages as the building is completed.

The term also refers to workers' co-operatives in the building trade.

Retailers' cooperative

A retailers' cooperative (often known as a secondary or marketing co-operative in the UK) is an organization which employs economies of scale on behalf of its members to get discounts from manufacturers and to pool marketing. It is common for locally-owned grocery stores, hardware stores and pharmacies. In this case the members of the cooperative are businesses rather than individuals.

The well-known Best Western hotel chain is actually a giant cooperative, although it now prefers to call itself a "nonprofit membership association." It gave up on the "cooperative" label after the courts kept insisting on calling it a franchisor despite its nonprofit status.

Utility cooperative

A utility cooperative is a public utility that is owned by its customers. It is a type of consumer cooperative). In the US, many such cooperatives were formed to provide rural electrical and telephone service as part of the New Deal. See Rural Utilities Service.

Worker cooperative

A worker cooperative is a cooperative that is wholly owned and democratically controlled by its "worker-owners". There are no outside, or consumer owners, in a worker's cooperative - only the workers own shares of the business. Membership is not compulsory for employees, and only employees can become members. Probably the best known example of worker co-operation is the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation (MCC) in the Basque Country.

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