The Process of Transformation of Rights to Residential Units in Housing Cooperatives in Poland

This article deals with the rules and procedures for transformation of rights to apartments in housing cooperatives. The transformation means changing rights of housing cooperative members (occupancy right, ownership right) into strata titles. Housing cooperatives with an unregulated legal status of land are only conditionally allowed to transform the right to occupancy into the right of ownership to a residential unit. The rate of transformation of rights to apartments in housing cooperatives depends on the legal regulations which govern the procedures and financial conditions. This study has demonstrated that most transformations concern a change of occupancy right to an apartment into strata title. Consequently, the percentage of apartments in housing cooperatives to which tenants held occupancy right fell from 23.7 to 6.5% during the analyzed period of time.