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An apartment, or flat, is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Such a building may be called an apartment building, especially if it consists of many apartments for rent.
Apartments may be owned by an owner/occupier or rented by tenants.
The term apartment is favored in North America, whereas the term flat is commonly, but not exclusively, used in the United
Kingdom, Hong Kong and most Commonwealth countries. In Malaysian English, flat often denotes a housing block of lesser quality meant for lower-income groups, while apartment is more generic and may also
include luxury condominiums.
Tenement law refers to the feudal basis of permanent property such as land or rents. May be found combined as in "Messuage or Tenement" to encompass all the
land, buildings and other assets of a property.
In the US, some apartment-dwellers own their own apartments, either as co-ops, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the
building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older
houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment connotes a residential unit or section in a building. In some locations, particularly the United States, the word denotes a rental unit
owned by the building owner, and is not typically used for a condominium.
In the UK, some flat owners own a share in the company that owns the freehold of the building. This is commonly known as a
"share of freehold" flat. The freehold company has the right to collect annual ground rents from each of the flat owners in the building. The freeholder can also develop or sell the building,
subject to the usual planning and restrictions that might apply.
In some countries the word unit is a more general term referring to both apartments and rental business suites. The word is
generally used only in the context of a specific building; e.g., "This building has three units" or "I'm going to rent a unit in this building", but not "I'm going to rent a unit
somewhere." In Australia, a unit refers to flats, apartments or even semi-detached houses. Some buildings can be characterized as mixed use buildings, meaning part of the building is for commercial,
business, or office use, usually on the first floor or first couple floors, and there are one or more apartments in the rest of the building, usually on the upper floors.
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Apartment types and characteristics
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Apartments can be classified into several types. In the US the typical terms are a Studio, efficiency, bedsit, or bachelor style apartment. These all tend to be the smallest apartments with the cheapest
rents in a given area. These kinds of apartment usually consist mainly of a large room which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen facilities as part of this central
room, but the bathroom is its own smaller separate room.
Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom apartments, in which one bedroom is separate from the rest of the apartment. Then there are
two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. apartments. Small apartments often have only one entrance.
Large apartments often have two entrances, perhaps a door in the front and another in the back.
Depending on the building design, the entrance doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway. Depending on location, apartments may be available for rent furnished
with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in with their own furniture.
A garden apartment complex consists of low-rise apartment buildings built with landscaped grounds
surrounding them.[1] The apartment buildings are often arranged around courtyards that are open at one end. A garden apartment has some characteristics of a townhouse: each apartment has its own building
entrance, or just a few apartments share a small foyer or stairwell at each building entrance. Unlike a townhouse, each apartment occupies only one level. Modern garden apartment buildings are never more
than three stories high, since they typically don't have elevators (lifts). However, the first "garden apartment" buildings in the United States, developed in the early 20th century, were five
stories high.[2][3] Some garden apartment buildings place a one-car garage under each apartment. The grounds are more landscaped than for other modestly scaled apartments.
Another definition of
"garden apartment" is a unit built half below grade or at ground level.[4] The implication is that there is a view or direct access to a garden from the apartment, but this is not necessarily
the case.
Laundry facilities may be found in a common area accessible to all the tenants in the building, or each apartment may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built
and the design of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the apartments in the building or separate for each apartment and billed separately to each tenant
(however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in
apartments. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are extra also. Parking space(s), air conditioner, and
extra storage space may or may not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the apartment
building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and, thus, to the mailman too. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very
large apartment buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer
(equivalent to a doorbell) for each individual unit. In smaller apartment buildings such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash containers similar to those used
at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets
in an apartment.
In some parts of the world, the word apartment refers to a new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the word flat means a converted self-contained
unit in an older building. An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment is commonly called a loft, although some modern lofts are built by design. An apartment consisting of
the top floor of a high apartment building can be called a penthouse.
When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family member, the unit may be known as an in-law
apartment or granny flat, though these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the basements
of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites or "mother-in-law suites."
In Milwaukee vernacular architecture, a Polish flat is an existing small house or cottage that has
been lifted up to accommodate the creation of a new basement floor housing a separate apartment, then set down again; thus becoming a modest two-story flat.[5]
In Russia, a communal apartment
(«коммуналка») is a room with a shared kitchen and bath. A typical arrangement is a cluster of five or so apartments with their common kitchen
and bathroom and their own front door, occupying a floor in a pre-Revolutionary mansion. Traditionally a room is owned by the government and assigned to a family on a semi-permanent basis. It is possible
to "privatize" a room by paying a large sum of money to the government; then it can legally be sold.
[edit] Property classes
In every community there are several types of multi-family
housing, properties are typically put into one of four property classes.[6] Each "class" of properties has a letter grade. These grades are used to help investors and real estate brokers speak
a common language so they can understand a property's characteristics and condition quickly. They are as follows:
Class A properties are luxury units. They are usually less than 10 years old
and are often new, upscale apartment buildings. Average rents are high, and they are generally located in desirable geographic areas. White-collar employees live in them and are usually renters by choice.
Class B properties can be 10 to 25 years old. They are generally well maintained and have a middle class tenant base of both white- and blue-collar workers. Some are renters by choice, and others
by necessity.
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