Types of residential dwelling available to rent / let

Residential dwellings can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between free-standing or detached dwellings and various types of attached dwellings. Contact Black Katz to find one right for you.

Residential dwellings can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between free-standing or detached dwellings and various types of attached dwellings. Detached dwellings vary greatly in scale and amount of accommodation provided. Similarly, attached or multi-unit housing is also varied in scale and levels of appointment. Although there appear to be many different types, many of the variations listed below are purely matters of style rather than spatial arrangement, or even, scale. Some of the terms listed are only used in some parts of the English speaking world.

To find a flat or house to rent in London contact Black Katz. Black Katz have flats and houses to rent across London. If you are a landlord wishing to rent out your property contact Black Katz.

These are some of the terms you may find:-

Detached dwellings / single-unit housing

  • A-frame, so-called because of the appearance of the structure
  • Addison house, a type of low-cost house with a concrete floor and cavity walls of concrete blocks, built in the UK between 1920 and 1921
  • Airey house, a type of low-cost house developed in the UK in the 1940s by Sir Edwin Airey, recognisable by its precast concrete columns and walls of precast ship-lap concrete panels
  • Bungalow, a single-story house (not including optional basement)
  • Castle, primarily a defensive structure dating from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century
  • Chalet bungalow, popular in England, a combination of a house and a bungalow
  • Cottage, usually a small country dwelling, but weavers' cottages are three-storied townhouses with the top floor reserved for the working quarters.
  • Craftsman house
  • Deck House, custom-built post and beam homes using high-quality woods and masonry
  • Detached (free-standing), any house that is completely separated from its neighbours
  • Earth sheltered, using earth against building walls for external thermal mass, to reduce heat loss, and to maintain easily a steady indoor air temperature
  • Farmhouse, the main residence on a farm
  • Faux chateau (1980s - 90s), inflated suburban house with non-contextual French Provençal references
  • Gablefront house (or Gablefront cottage) A vernacular house type which has a gable roof facing the street.
  • Geodesic dome, pioneered by Buckminster Fuller
  • Hawksley BL8 bungalow, aluminium-clad timber-framed house build in the UK in the 1950s
  • I-house, a traditional British folk house, became popular in middle and southern U.S. Colonies
  • Link-detached, adjacent detached properties that do not have a party wall, but are linked by the garage(s) so forming a single frontage
  • Linked, rowhouse or semi-detached house that is linked only at the foundation. Above ground, it appears as a detached house. Linking the foundations reduces cost.
  • Log cabin, a house built of unsquared timbers
  • Lustron house, a type of prefab house
  • Mansion, a very large detached house
  • 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.
  • Microhouse, a dwelling that fulfils all the requirements of habitation (shelter, sleep, cooking, heating, toilet) in a highly compact space. Very common in Japan.
  • Monolithic dome, a structure cast in one piece over a form, usually of concrete
  • Microapartment, popular in Japan, single room containing kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living space in one place (usually on many floors)
  • Octagon house, a house of symmetrical octagonal floor plan, popularized briefly during the 19th century by Orson Squire Fowler
  • Patio home
  • Pole house, a timber house in which a vertical poles carry the load of the suspended floors and roof, allowing all the walls to be non-loadbearing.
  • Prefab, a house where the main structure is prefabricated (common after WWII)
  • Roundhouse, a type of house with a circular plan, built in Western Europe prior to the Roman occupation
  • Split-level house, a style popular in the 1950s and 1960s
  • Shack, a small, usually rundown, wooden building
  • Souterrain, an earth dwelling typically deriving from Neolithic or Bronze Age times
  • Stilt houses or pile dwellings, houses raised on stilts over the surface of the soil or a body of water
  • Snout house, a house with the garage door being the closest part of the dwelling to the street
  • Splits
    • 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.
  • Tudor, the style of architecture and decorative arts modeled on the original Tudor architecture produced in England between 1485 and 1603.
  • Mock Tudor, a modern emulation of Tudor architecture
  • Underground home, an underground dwelling
  • Unity house, a type of low-cost dwelling built in the UK in the 1940s and 1950s, with walls of stacked concrete panels between concrete pillars. About 19,000 were constructed.
  • Vernacular house, house constructed in a native manner, close to nature, using the materials locally available
  • Victorian house
  • Villa, originally an upper-class country house, though since its origins in Roman times the idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably
  • Wimpey house, a low-cost house built in the UK from the 1940s onwards. The walls are of no-fines concrete. About 300,000 were constructed.

Semi-detached dwellings

Commonly refers to two separate residences, attached side-by-side, The semi detached often looks like two houses put together or as a large single home, and both legally and structurally, literally shares a wall between halves.

Attached dwellings / multi-unit housing

  • Apartment: a flat - a relatively self-contained housing unit in a building which is often rented out to a one (including the head(s) of a family), or two or more people sharing a lease in a partnership, for their exclusive use. Sometimes called a flat or digs. Some locales have legal definitions of what constitutes an apartment. In some places 'apartment' denotes a building that was built of such units, while 'flat' denotes a unit in a building built originally as a single-family house and later subdivided into a multiunit house type.
  • Apartment building: a multi-unit dwelling made up of several (generally four or more) apartments.
  • Bedsit: A UK expression (short for bed-sitting room) for a single-roomed dwelling which usually contains very sparse furniture and is very compact in design. Literally a bed and a place to sit.
  • Block of flats or tower block: a high-rise apartment building
  • Flat: in the U.K., an apartment.
  • Garden flat: a flat which is at garden (ground) level in a multilevel house or apartment building, especially in the case of Georgian and Victorian terraced housing which has been sub-divided into separate dwellings.
  • Maisonette: an apartment / flat on two levels with internal stairs, or which has its own entrance at street level.
  • Penthouse: The top floor of multi-story building
  • Studio flat or bachelor apartment or efficiency apartment: a suite with a single room that doubles as living/sitting room and bedroom, with a kitchenette and bath squeezed in off to one side. The unit is designed for a single occupant or possibly a couple. Especially in Canada and South Africa, also called bachelor, or bachelorette if very small.
  • Tenement: a multi-unit dwelling usually of frame construction, quite often brick veneered, made up of several (generally many more than four to six) apartments (i.e. an large apartment building) that can be up to five stories. Tenements do not generally have lifts. In the UK the connotation sometimes implies a run-down or poorly-cared-for building. It nearly always means a very large apartment building usually constructed during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century era sited in cities or company towns.
  • Loft or warehouse conversion can be an apartment building wherein part of the unit, usually consisting of the bedroom(s) and/or a second bedroom level bath is sub-divided vertically within the structurally tall bay between the structural floors of a former factory or warehouse building. The lofts created in such are locally supported by columns and bearing walls and not part of the overall original load bearing structure.
  • Garage-apartment: An apartment over a garage; if the garage is attached, the apartment will have a separate entrance from the main house.
  • Granny flat: Small apartment either at the back, side, in the basement, or on an upper level subdivision of the main house, usually with a separate entrance. Such Secondary suites are often efficiency or two room apartments but always have kitchen facilities (which is usually a legal requirement of any apartment).
  • Single Room Occupancy or SRO: A studio apartment, usually occurring with a block of many similar apartments, intended for use as public housing. They may or may not have their own washing, laundry, and kitchen facilities. (In the United States, lack of kitchen facilities prevents use of the term "apartment", so such would be classified as a boarding house or hotel.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Townhouse: 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.

    • To find a flat or house to rent in London contact Black Katz. Black Katz have flats and houses to rent across London. If you are a landlord wishing to rent out your property contact Black Katz.

Movable dwellings

  • Houseboat, a floating home on a water surface
  • Mobile home
  • Park home: Also called mobile home, it is a prefabricated house that is manufactured off-site.
  • Tent, usually a lightweight, moveable structure
  • Caravan