List of house types

Watch videos on African life

Residential dwellings can be built in a large variety of configurations. This summarizes some of them:

Apartment building: Several living quarters in the same building
Brownstone: see Rowhouse
Bungalow: One-storey house (not including optional basement)
Condominium: Separate residences with some common areas - see Townhouse
Detached (Free Standing): Any house that is completely separated from its neighbours.
- Bungalow: Single story house
- 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
- Two story
\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; the latter usually appears as a townhouse, but with two different entrances. see Semi-Detached
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.
Maisonette: Either a large house divided into separate dwellings each with their own entrance and having more than one floor - Or (UK usage) Any 2 story house, purpose built to have 2 front door entrances and one dwelling at ground level and one at first floor level
Mansion: Very large/expensive house
McMansion (1980s - 90s), Inflated suburban house with classicizing references.
Manufactured Home:
Patio Home:
Penthouse: Refers to the top floor of multi-story building
Rowhouse: also called "townhouse"; also called "terraced home": 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. If land is expensive enough to sacrifice the privacy of detached homes, it also justifies multiple stories.
- Semi-detached: a 2 unit rowhouse, often called a "duplex"
- Terraced Home: Since the late 18th century is a style of housing where identical individual houses are cojoined 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"
  - Back to back: Teraced 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: also called rowhouse; In British English, a townhouse is a house in the city; to distinguish from a house in the country and is not necessarily a rowhouse.
  - Stacked townhouse: Units are stacked on each other; units may be multilevel; all units have direct access from the outside