Co-op housing is becoming increasingly popular in the Czech Republic among developers, who start to use it as means of selling to clients who are not eligible for mortgages. While developers would prefer to sell flats directly to individual consumers, they’re being forced by falling demand to find new ways of building and selling flats. The developer Trigema is to start construction on co-operative apartment building in Prague – Hostivař in July, and 42 units of the total of 51 have been reserved. Finep claims it pre-sold 70 percent of the units in a co-op building in Prosek, which is to be completed next year. Rather than taking out mortgages, customers pay money back to the cooperative each month, much like a rental payment. Cooperative housing was a popular form of residential development in the 1970’s and 1980’s, but fell out of fashion after the 1989 revolution.
