Many potential homebuyers are caught in the middle — a single-family home is too expensive yet they do not want to rent and lose out on the mortgage-related tax benefits. The middle ground is often a condo or a co-op.

While buyers are familiar with condos, they may tend to shy away from co-ops mainly because of a fear of the unknown. In many ways, however, the two housing types are rather similar.

Brennan Hasleton moved to the District from Seattle and ended up buying a co-op. “I didn’t specifically set out to buy a co-op over a condo, I was looking at both,” he said. “I liked the building, which is one of six historical Cleveland Park apartment buildings.”

National Consumer Cooperative Bank data show there are more than 18,000 cooperative units in the Washington region. Of those, roughly 2,650 are in Northern Virginia, 6,740 are in Maryland, and almost 8,800 are in the District.

Residents of a housing co-op jointly control the building in which they live. Instead of buying “real” property, they buy stock or a membership in a cooperative corporation. That corporation owns the building, land and any common areas. The challenge for buyers can be obtaining a mortgage for a cooperative.

Brittney Baldwin, loan officer with the National Consumer Cooperative Bank or NCB, said it was created by an act of Congress to assist housing and commercial cooperatives across the country.

“We are currently one of the market leaders nationwide for cooperative share loan financing,” she said.  Share loans are used to allow people to buy into a co-op project.

For Hasleton, buying a co-op was different from buying his home in Seattle. “It was more intimate and I felt I knew my neighbors better than some of my friends who lived in condos,” he said.

He said owning the building with your neighbors made everyone a bit more responsible. “If you saw something wrong, you had a serious interest in talking with your neighbors about it. I think in condos the sense is more, well, ‘I’ll just call the property manager.’ ”

Dan Melman, with W.C. & A.N. Miller Realtors, said one of the biggest differences between condos and co-ops is that co-ops tend to be owned by residents because the oversight boards don’t like absentee owners. “Both co-ops and condos elect a board of directors who oversee operations and annual budgeting,” he said. “These boards manage the affairs of the corporation and may retain a professional management company to handle actual day-to-day management if permitted under their established bylaws.”

Melman added these boards can have a big say in who can move in.

“The cooperative board of directors often reserves the right to interview and approve prospective purchasers for membership/ownership,” he said. “The board approval process is perhaps the most significant operational difference between co-ops and other forms of ownership.

The Dakota co-op in Manhattan is famous, not just for being the home of the late John Lennon and his wife, Yoko One, but for denying purchase rights to both former President Richard Nixon and pop star Madonna.

As with the purchase of most properties the decision to purchase will involve location and price. Along with price, buyers also must figure in the monthly fee.

Condos and co-ops require monthly maintenance fees that can vary significantly, covering trash pickup, snow removal, upkeep to common areas and even utilities. Condominiums may not individually metered so the fees represent an apportioned amount of the utility bill for the entire building. Proponents of co-ops say that is wasteful and not as “green” as individually metered co-op units, where residents have more incentives to limit energy consumption.