TY - JOUR
T1 - Apartment ownership around the world : focusing on credible outcomes rather than ideal systems
AU - Easthope, Hazel
AU - van den Nouwelant, Ryan
AU - Thompson, Sian
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - No matter where in the world they live, if a person lives in a city it is increasingly likely that, if they can buy a property, it will be an apartment. Yet the documents a Sydney buyer's lawyer will review will be different to those in New York or Helsinki because there are many different systems of multi-owned property ownership around the world. These differ because of underlying differences in property law, but also because different jurisdictions have dealt with the dual challenges of horizontal subdivision and cooperative management in very different ways. While creating typologies for these different systems is helpful to understand the varied forms they can take, typologies are challenged by the fact each system differs in practice. In this paper, we draw on Ho's (2014) ‘credibility thesis’ to explain why it is so difficult to classify multi-owned property systems across jurisdictions. We demonstrate that similar legal systems of multi-owned property can result in different outcomes for owners in practice, just as different legal systems can result in similar outcomes. This is because the relationship between legal systems of ownership and the experiences of owners is mediated by local social, cultural, economic and political contexts.
AB - No matter where in the world they live, if a person lives in a city it is increasingly likely that, if they can buy a property, it will be an apartment. Yet the documents a Sydney buyer's lawyer will review will be different to those in New York or Helsinki because there are many different systems of multi-owned property ownership around the world. These differ because of underlying differences in property law, but also because different jurisdictions have dealt with the dual challenges of horizontal subdivision and cooperative management in very different ways. While creating typologies for these different systems is helpful to understand the varied forms they can take, typologies are challenged by the fact each system differs in practice. In this paper, we draw on Ho's (2014) ‘credibility thesis’ to explain why it is so difficult to classify multi-owned property systems across jurisdictions. We demonstrate that similar legal systems of multi-owned property can result in different outcomes for owners in practice, just as different legal systems can result in similar outcomes. This is because the relationship between legal systems of ownership and the experiences of owners is mediated by local social, cultural, economic and political contexts.
KW - apartment houses
KW - condominiums
KW - credibility theory (insurance)
KW - home ownership
UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:55155
U2 - 10.1016/j.cities.2019.102463
DO - 10.1016/j.cities.2019.102463
M3 - Article
SN - 0264-2751
VL - 97
JO - Cities
JF - Cities
M1 - 102463
ER -