Homeownership in Multi-Apartment Buildings: Control beyond Property Rights

Abstract

The paper focuses on the control homeowners have over common issues in a multi-apartment building. It specifically aims to contribute to further examination and recognition of the role various forms of power play in residents’ everyday life in addition to the formal condominium arrangements. Drawing on wide homeownership literature and building on the structuration theory, we portray the multi-apartment building as a particular “locale” and propose a conceptualization of power in terms of “frames” to be tested for its explanatory ability. Using survey data from Ljubljana, our exploratory analysis confirms how, besides the formal frame of power (property and management rights), two other frames – community/social control and residents’ co-action – are statistically significant for explaining residents’ feeling of being in control, their role even larger. The proposed conceptualization might be useful for illuminating the cross-national variability in homeownership and possible parallels with other countries.