Flats / Apartments
Apartment: a relatively self-contained housing unit in a building which is often rented out to a family or one or more people for their exclusive use. Sometimes called a flat. Some locales have legal definitions of what constitutes an apartment.
Apartment building: a multi-unit dwelling made up of several (generally four or more) apartments.
Apartment tower, block of flats or tower block: a high-rise apartment building
Condominium: a form of ownership of an individual apartment and a percentage of common areas
Co-op, a form of ownership in which a corporation owns the entire apartment building or development and residents own shares in the corporation that correspond to their apartment and a percentage of common areas
Duplex: Two separate residences, usually side-by-side, but sometimes on two different floors. The former often looks like two houses put together, sharing a wall (see semi-detached); the latter usually appears as a townhouse, but with two different entrances.
Flat: an apartment, especially one taking up an entire floor of a house with several flats.
2-Flat, 3-Flat, and 4-Flat houses: Houses or buildings with 2, 3, or 4 flats, respectively, especially when each of the flats takes up one entire floor of the house. There is a common stairway in the front and often in the back providing access to all the flats. 2-Flats and sometimes 3-flats are common in certain older neighborhoods.
Railroad flat: a type of apartment that is in a building built on a very narrow lot (usually about as wide as a railroad car, or Pullman car sections thereof), thus there is no room for a hallway. Rooms are built end-to-end, one must pass through all the rooms to get from one end to the other of the apartment.
Garden Apartment: a building style usually characterized by two story, semi-detached buildings, each floor being a separate apartment.
Housing project, government-owned housing
Maisonette: an apartment / flat on two levels with internal stairs, or which has its own entrance at street level. Less used in the UK now that the term apartment is migrating into British English.
Penthouse: The top floor of multi-story building
Plattenbau (East German) / Panelák (Czech, Slovak) - a communist-era tower block that is made of slabs of concrete put together.
Tenement a multi-unit dwelling made up of several (generally four or more) apartments (i.e. an apartment building). In the United States the connotation implies a run-down or poorly-cared-for building.
Loft or warehouse conversion
Garage-apartment: An apartment over a garage; if the garage is attached, the apartment will have a separate entrance from the main house.
Garalow: a portmateau word garage+bungalow; similar to a garage-apartment, but with the apartment and garage at the same level.
Mother-in-law apartment: Small apartment either at the back or on an upper level of the main house, usually with a separate entrance (also known as a "granny flat" in the UK and Australia).
four-plus-one: an apartment building that has four floors of apartments on top of parking. It was particularly popular in Chicago during the 1960s and 1970s, especially on the city's north side.
triple decker: a three-family apartment house, usually of frame construction, in which all three apartment units are stacked on top of one another.
Studio apartment: A self-contained unit with one main room, one bathroom, and some closet space. There is no distinct bedroom in a studio: sleeping, cooking, dining, living is all done in the main room. |
