Apartment • Apartment: a relatively self-contained housing unit in a building which is often rented out to one person or a family, or two or more people sharing a lease in a partnership, for their exclusive use. Sometimes called a flat or digs (slang). Some locales have legal definitions of what constitutes an apartment. In some locations, "apartment" denotes a building that was built specifically for such units, whereas "flat" denotes a unit in a building that had been originally built as a single-family house, but later on subdivided into some multi-unit house type.[5] • Apartment building, Block of flats: a multi-unit dwelling made up of several (generally four or more) apartments. Contrast this with the two-family house and the three-family dwelling.
An apartment (in US English) or flat (in British English and often associated with or miscontrued as social housing) is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) 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 (two types of housing tenure).
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.
In New Zealand English, the two terms are independent: apartment has the US sense, while flat usually refers to any rental property, but especially one shared by students or another non-family group.
Tenement law refers to the feudal basis of permanent property such as land or rents. May be found combined as in "Messuage or