From Renters to Owners

After numerous failed state-led initiatives to stem the exodus of middle-income residents in postwar New York, in the late 1960s landlords and major real estate associations proposed their own solution to increase homeownership and retain the middle class: converting rental housing into cooperatives. The middle-income tenants of this housing, however, initially widely rejected apartment ownership, preferring the security of rent-regulated housing. This set off a decade-long battle over the control and nature of moderate- and middle-income housing. This chapter traces how over the 1970s middle-income tenants came to embrace apartment ownership, a shift that pushed the housing stock toward market-rate condominiums and cooperatives and exacerbated the city’s mounting affordable housing crisis.

Apartment ownership in a Condominium under Georgian Law

The ancient history of the concept of condominium and the particular attitude towards the right of ownership of an apartment has attracted worldwide recognition for this type of property. The concept of condominium is based on three components: (1) individual ownership of an apartment; (2) joint possession of common property of a plot of land and parts of a building; and (3) membership in an owners’ association. An apartment in a condominium is an exception to the principle of superficies solo cedit in property law. In this case, the rights of ownership of owners of apartments in a condominium—the rights of ownership of a number of persons—are accumulated with regard to a plot of land. This article analyses, on the one hand, the peculiarities of apartment ownership in condominiums, Georgian legislation—which is the result of the reception of German civil law, and, on the other hand, the court practice developed on these issues in Georgian law.