List Of House Types
Residential dwellings can be built in a large variety of configurations. A basic division is between the single-family home and the flat/apartment, but there are also many subdivisions, listed below.
A shack is small, usually run-down building; they are not necessarily used as a dwelling.
Brownstone
Colonial house: a traditional style house.Cottage: Usually refers to a small country dwelling, but weavers' cottages are three-storied townhouses with the top floor reserved for the working quarters.
Detached (Free Standing): Any house that is completely separated from its neighbours.
Farmhouse: Builing 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.
Faux Chateau: (1980s - 90s) Inflated suburban house with non-contextual French Provencal references.
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.
Patio Home
Rowhouse: (USA) 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.
Split-level house: A style popular in the 50's and 60's.
Semi-detached: a 2 unit rowhouse, often called a "duplex" in the USA.
Terraced House: Since the late 18th century is a style of housing where 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".
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.
Townhouse: also called rowhouse (US). In the UK, a townhouse is a house which is often three stories tall with a garage on the ground floor: it is usually terraced.
o 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.
