Common property rights in which members of a group jointly own the exclusive use of the resource often govern renewable natural resources such as groundwater, pastures, and fisheries. Common property rights are modeled as a joint wealth maximizing share contract among users of a capital resource in which allocation of the resource among the group members is guided by egalitarian sharing (and other rules) rather than by prices. We consider renewable resources and examine 1) the incentives of individual users of the common resource, 2) the resulting harvest paths, and 3) the steady-state comparative statics. In each case, we compare common property outcomes to the outcome under perfectly defined private rights and open access. We show how common property ownership of natural resources can generate rent and be a second-best solution when private property rights are costly to establish. We further show that depending on the local stability properties of the steady state, common ownership can exhibit local stability properties of its steady state that can qualitatively mimic either private ownership or open access.