List of house types

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Residential dwellings can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between the house/single-family home and the flat/apartment, but there are also many subdivisions, listed below. Some of the terms listed are only used in some parts of the English speaking world.

Houses

A shack is a small, often run-down building, not necessarily used as a dwelling.

A-frame, so-called because of the appearance of the structure
Brownstone: see rowhouse
Caravan
Cape Cod: Popular in the Northeastern United States
Colonial house: a traditional style house in the United States
Cottage: Usually refers to a small country dwelling, but weavers' cottages are three-storied townhouses with the top floor reserved for the working quarters.
Craftsman house:
Detached (free-standing): Any house that is completely separated from its neighbours.
*Bungalow: Single story house (not including optional basement)
*Backsplit: Multilevel house that appears as a bungalow from the front elevation
*Frontsplit: Multilevel house that appears as a two story house in front and a bungalow in the back. It is the opposite of a backsplit and is a rare configuration.
*Sidesplit: Multilevel house where the different levels are visible from the front elevation
*Link-detached: Adjacent detached properties which do not have a party wall, but which are linked by the garage(s) and so forming a single frontage.
*Two-story, three-story
*Ranch: Single story house, usually with garage and basement.
Prefab, a house where the main structure is prefabricated (common after WWII).
*Lustron house, a type of prefab house
Farmhouse: Building serving as the main residence on a farm.
Linked: Rowhouse or semi-detached house that is linked only at the foundation. Above ground, they appear as detached houses. Linking the foundations reduces cost.
Geodesic dome, pioneered by Buckminister Fuller
Faux chateau: (1980s - 90s) Inflated suburban house with non-contextual French Provencal references.
Foursquare house:
Igloo, constructed of ice
Log cabin, a house built of unsquared timbers
Mansion: Very large/expensive house
McMansion (1980s - 90s) Inflated suburban house with classicizing references.
Manufactured home
Mews property: A Mews is an urban stable-block that has been converted into residential properties. The houses are converted into ground floor garages with a small flat above which used to house the ostler.
'''Mobile home
Patio home
Rowhouse: (USA); also called "terraced home (USA); also called "townhouse"; ": 3 or more houses in a row sharing a "party" wall with its adjacent neighbour. In New York, "Brownstones" are rowhouses. Rowhouses are typically multiple stories. The term townhouse is currently coming into wider use in the UK, but terraced house (not "terraced home") is more common.
Split-level house: A style popular in the 50's and 60's.
Sears house: Sears houses were owner-built "kit" houses sold by Sears, Roebuck and Co. through its catalog division from 1906 -1940.
Semi-detached: two houses joined together, often called a "duplex" in the USA.
Storybook Houses 1920s houses inspired by hollywood set design
Tent, usually a lightweight, moveable structure
Terraced house: Since the late 18th century is a style of housing where (generally) identical individual houses are conjoined into rows - a line of houses which abut directly on to each other built with shared party walls between dwellings whose uniform fronts and uniform height created an ensemble that was more stylish than a "rowhouse". However this is also the UK term for a "rowhouse" regardless of whether the houses are identical or not.
*Back-to-back: Terraced houses which also adjoin a second terrace to the rear. They were a common form of housing for workers during the Industrial Revolution in England.
Treehouse A house that is built among the branches or around the trunk of one or more mature trees and does not rest on the ground.
Townhouse: also called rowhouse (US). In the UK, a townhouse is a traditional term for an upper class house in London (in contrast with country house), and is now coming into use as a term for new terraced houses, which are often three stories tall with a garage on the ground floor.
*Stacked townhouse: Units are stacked on each other; units may be multilevel; all units have direct access from the outside
Shack: A small, usually rundown, wooden building.
Victorian house:
Shotgun house: term referring to two distinct styles of long, narrow house common in the Southern United States.
Travel trailer (alternative to caravan in British English)
Tudor style refers to the style of architecture and decorative arts modelled on the original Tudor architecture produced in England between 1485 and 1603.
*Mock Tudor refers to a modern emulation of Tudorbethan architecture.

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).
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.

List of house types

Houses

Flats / Apartments

See also