Can someone explain the difference to me? I have never really understood what distinguishes one from the other. They're both sort of like apartments, right, that are owned by the resident? In other words, one unit in a multi unit building that has common areas.

from my understanding the co-po you are buying into the common, such as becoming a shareholder in to a company instead of getting a piece of paper you get a living area, where as a condo you are purchasing a house that happen to be semi attached onto another house that may or may not be on a property that has rules or a home owner association.

the co-op looks at keeping the profit of the properity at a whole for a certain price that bennifits all that live in the community so example if you want out then the co-op would purchase your stock back for market vaule, where as in a condo (unit A) you may have your properity upgraded beautiful but the person who is over in (unit B) as a complete hole in the wall. both go on the market one is set at $10k and the other at $40K

A co-op building's board can impose restrictions and legally discriminate in their selection of new tenant owners. Where as condo have to go by the fair housing act. Condo association fee are normally what are used for funding the maintance of "common area"

That makes sense. After posting this, I looked on wikipedia and got a description similar to what you are saying. I guess I should have gone there first.

Anyway, it's interesting because co-ops only seem to exist in certain markets, for example NYC.

zella gave a pretty good description there. It's a little confusing to understand at first until it's laid out like that for you.

I have always been curious about the difference as well. Thanks for posting this. I wonder what markets besides NYC it is common in. That's really the only area where I'd heard of it.

I wonder what the advantages are of this sort of setup, that someone would do it rather than condos?