Skopje

North Macedonia has no working housing-cooperative tenure. There is no member share, no right of use and no cooperative landlord. The collective form that does exist is the building itself. Owners of flats in a block form a community of owners and usually hire a building manager (upravitel, a licensed management firm). The rules come from the Law on Housing (Zakon za domuvanje), first adopted in 2009 and amended in July 2025. A new Law on Cooperatives (Zakon za zadrugite) followed in 2023. So far it has been read mainly as a route to energy cooperatives, not housing.

The idea is older than the law. Yugoslav housing grew from self-management, in which enterprises and municipalities built socially owned flats and workers received a right of occupancy (stanarsko pravo, a lifelong tenancy). MOBA's conversation in the Radical Housing Journal traces its own name to "moba", the Yugoslav word for neighbours building together. After 1991 that stock was sold to its occupants at a discount, and the cooperative thread was cut. A study of Zagreb's housing policies shows the same turn from Yugoslav social housing to private, debt-financed ownership in Croatia.

From our library

MOBA: Rethinking needs and financing for affordable rent and cooperative housing in Central and South-Eastern Europe

Regional cooperative network whose Yugoslav-rooted model has no Macedonian member yet.

Read more →

From our library

Housing Policies in the Service of Social and Spatial (In)Equality

Traces Croatia’s shift from Yugoslav social housing to privatized, debt-fuelled policy, reshaping Zagreb’s inequalities.

Read more →

Today the non-market side of Skopje is made up of a few actors who meet at the level of the building. Habitat for Humanity Macedonia, working in the country since 2004, is the largest. It finances energy retrofits through a revolving fund and, since 2015, through its management company Habidom, which ran 128 apartment buildings in 2019. The Housing and Tenants Organization (HTO), a Skopje association founded in 2022, speaks for renters and for young people locked out of the market. Across the region, the study of cooperative housing pioneers in Central and South-Eastern Europe follows the MOBA network. Its members in Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana and Budapest are building a revolving fund and an ethical bank for new cooperatives. None of them is Macedonian yet.

These groups face different problems. Habitat's obstacle is getting owners in an ageing panel block to agree and borrow together. The tenants' groups face a rental market with no protected tier. A new cooperative would face both, plus the absence of land, finance and a legal model. The state does not yet treat cooperatives as part of its answer. Its own affordability instruments are flats it builds and sells or lets itself.

Housing policy in North Macedonia is made nationally and mostly with public money. Since 2024 the government of Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has run it through the Ministry of Transport and Communications, whose remit includes housing. Its minister, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Nikoloski, has chosen one main lever: the state building flats and selling them below market. In November 2024 he announced that the state housing company would build for sale in Shtip, Skopje and Bitola, aiming to cut prices by 30-40%. In Bitola the flats went on sale at €1,000/m². The government also promised a "Buy a house for young people" scheme for young couples, a successor to the older subsidised-loan programme "Buy a house, buy a flat".

The second national task is the last of the old state stock. A pending amendment to the Law on Housing gives families still living in state-owned flats under pre-1998 use agreements until 31 December 2027 to buy or rent them. Rents would be income-linked, from 25 to 190 denars per square metre, and eviction becomes possible after the final deadline. The central government also sets the property tax that the municipalities collect.

The City of Skopje, the city-wide tier above its 10 municipalities, holds the General Urban Plan (GUP, the master plan that fixes land use and density). The plan for 2012-2022 has expired and its successor is still being drafted, according to BIRN reporting on the Kuprom site. The municipalities issue detailed plans and building permits. In November 2025 voters elected Orce Gjorgjievski of VMRO-DPMNE as mayor with 57.03% of the vote. During the campaign he pledged that "every new building" should be part of a systematic plan, with infrastructure and public services at its centre.

No programme yet supports cooperatives, whether through land, a dedicated loan line or a legal model. The nearest instruments are for owners. The EBRD (the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) has lent €4 million to NLB Bank for homeowners and housing collectives, with cashback of up to 20% funded by the EU and Japan. Habitat for Humanity Macedonia's revolving fund lends to building communities on similar terms.

The state's answer to empty homes is the tax bill. Since January 2023 owners of a flat unused for more than six months a year pay three times the usual property tax, and five times if they fail to declare it. No register of vacant buildings or conversion programme exists, so disused sites such as the Kuprom factory are more likely to become new towers than homes made from what already stands.

Climate policy points at the same buildings. Amendments to the Energy Efficiency Law in September 2025 require a renovation strategy for residential, public and commercial buildings to 2050, and oblige the state to renovate 3% of its own buildings each year. The national energy and climate plan targets a cut in greenhouse gases of 82% against 1992. At home the gap is large: 86% of households heat with a stove, which feeds the winter smog.

The civic side of the debate asks for rights rather than prices. A 2026 report on housing across the Balkans argues that urgent state strategies are still missing, and gives the last word to Skopje's tenants.

Habitat for Humanity Macedonia's retrofit programme is the city's clearest proof that owners can act together. Since 2010 it has renovated 72 multi-apartment buildings with 2,033 flats. The work saves 9,185 MWh of energy and 4,261 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. It began as a USAID pilot and continues as a revolving fund, as the Periféria investor report records. Habitat also pressed for years for the 2025 amendments to the Law on Housing, which aim to put every block under proper management.

Organisation in focus

Habitat for Humanity Macedonia

The largest non-market housing actor in Skopje: building retrofits, management and Housing Law advocacy.

Read more →

The City Wall (Gradski zid) is the housing Tange's plan left behind. Designed by the Macedonian firms Beton and Makedonijaproekt, it is a ring of horizontal blocks 24 m high, punctuated by towers of 45 m. It is still lived in, and it is the kind of large panel-era block the new renovation strategy has to reach. The Transport Centre, Tange's station completed in 1981, shows the other side of the plan: 5 of its 10 track troughs were never used.

The social buildings in Butel and Saraj bring the national social-housing programme into the capital. They are the Skopje entries in a list that has already handed over flats in Veles, Kočani, Strumica, Gevgelija and Debar. For families on the waiting list they are the only non-market rent the city offers.

Kuprom, a chrome smelter in Hrom abandoned for more than 20 years, is the test for reuse. The civic group Kulturno eho has long asked for its 21,000 square metres to become a cultural centre or student housing. The owners are waiting for the new master plan, and BIRN reports that the stage is set for new residential buildings instead.

The Housing and Tenants Organization (HTO) works on the demand side. Its project with the Smart Balkans programme brings young people into the search for housing solutions in a city where they leave home in their thirties. It is the nearest thing Skopje has to the tenant federations that seeded cooperatives elsewhere.

Organisation in focus

Housing and Tenants Organization (HTO)

Improves housing conditions and tenants' rights, focusing on youth affordable housing initiatives.

Read more →

Rasadnik, in Kisela Voda, is the planning story the new mayor tells about himself. As mayor of that municipality he replaced a plan for 99 buildings with an international competition for the detailed plan, judged by an independent jury. Whether the city-wide GUP follows that method will decide what Skopje's next generation of housing looks like.