When is a flat not a flat?

The vast majority of new flats being built these days,
seem to be called luxury apartments! Hmmm!!

In this town there are lots of retirement properties. The social housing blocks are flats whilst the privately owned are apartments. I agree with Rosina...it's the Hyacinth Bucket effect . A lot of the social housing flats are bigger than the privately owned apartments.

Go and live on a sink estate then.

Just worked it out. We live in a quasi semi, Queen Anne period peasant's cottage, with a bijoux walled garden. lol

Go and live on a sink estate then.

Is that meant to be nasty or am I misinterpreting it as it's only text and I can't use intonation or body language to gauge intention?

The blocks around here are known as apartments, but the Victorian terraced properties with one property upstairs and one down, are still known as Tyneside Flats (Tyneside apartments would just be weird!!!)

In Ireland some time back I noticed that flat owners only owned 'apartments'. It's definitely a snobby status thing. A 'flat' was something people rented, probably flea ridden, etc!! It used really cheese me off when someone said 'apartment' in a special voice/accent.

To be kind, it was a time when home ownership was low and times were tough.

Not everyone thought like that. One friend there loved how Prince Charles referred to his 'flat'!

angsw well, that explains it our first home was a flat and I had an Irish friend who, if I invited her round to the "flat" would say "OMG don't be silly, you don't live in a flat, your appartment is nice" It amused me, to her "flat" is an insult and means your home is a hovel!

I guess this difficulty of knowing whether to call it an apartment or a flat is all part of our new 'aspirational' culture.

It all sounds a bit "Abigail's Party" to me, but I wonder what an English estate agent/lawyer would make of the Scottish equivalent of an "Upper Flatted Villa" or "Lower Flatted Villa"?!

I live in a triangular-shaped building with an inner garden. Two sides of the building are made up of four floors of flats while the third side is terraced bungalows, yet they are also referred to as flats. Each property on the ground floor has their own front door. Some delivery drivers get very confused but the good ol' postie always seems to get it right!

Quite a lot of people in Glasgow who live in tenement flats refer to their home as "my house".

I never really noticed this until I went down to England where a house usually means a home with two storeys, and no other welling above or below.

I meant "dwelling" not "welling"

In Scotland apartments often refers to rooms in a flat, house or bungalow - eg if you have two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bathroom, it might be described by estate agents as "a three apartment" or "four apartment" depending on whether they decided to count the kitchen. A bathroom would never be included as one of the apartments.

How about "The Dower House" . Not entirely sure what one is but sounds classy!

I've always thought of a "flat" as a property on one level where the flat is not the only unit of accommodation in the property as a whole.

I don't like American words like "apartment" creeping in to the English language but this is what can be expected from estate agents. I saw a house re-marketed online yesterday. I had already viewed and rejected it because all the rooms were small (eg double bed had to be placed in front of window to fit inside the main bedroom). The agents described the house as having "impressive proportions". Total tosh!

Philp17 - I think a "Dower House" is a small house on an estate where the titled owner has died and his surviving widow moves there when her son succeeed to the family title.

My flat has a main front door but also a 'back door' to the communal area leading to the shared garden space.
I' ve always thought a maisonette was a 2-storey flat within a block of similar properties so I'd never describe my home as a maisonette.
I dislike the current trend, whether conversions or newly built, to have living-room, dining area and kitchen all openplan.

Is it in a Quarter, or even better a vibrant Quarter?

Philip17 "a Dower House" was where they widowed Lady of the Manor lived when her son & wife became Lord & Lady of the Manor.

I live in a Mobile Home (Park Home) - people will persist in calling them caravans!!! They are permanent dwellings, single storey could be described as a bungalow - new ones look like a bungalow but even older ones look nice

When my parents moved up to Scotland with two children, they exchanged a 3-bedroom council house in Pompey for a 2-bedroom council "house" in Kirkcaldy, which turned out to be a flat with a tiny room off the livingroom as the second bedroom. The other party to the exchange definitely came off best in that swap.

Don't forget the extra Hyacinth value of living in a Conservation Area like what I do

I think the term Park Home is much better because most are not really "mobile"
What annoys me is that developers advertise houses as "homes". I think a house is not a home until it is lived in. "
"Apartment" is another example of how Americanisms have crept into our English language.

Oooooooh- Hyacinth value indeed. I'm in a conservation area which is part of the cultural quarter!!!

to her "flat" is an insult and means your home is a hovel!

<looks round>

<surveys devastation caused by many an autistic meltdown>



definitely a flat then.

a duplex flat though, don't you know! (two story flat, so not... erm... flat then though it should be flattened )

Re janeainswoth's post - I grew up in a quasi-semi (really a terrace of four houses) in East Manchester and we thought we were very posh. It certainly wasn't a Victorian artisan's cottage. It was built between the wars and had a front and back garden, AND an indoor bathroom and loo, unlike the Victorian terraces which surrounded us.

I thought a duplex flat was a maisonette lol.

So what is a maisonette? We had one decades ago, a nice 3 bed house built on top of a parade of shops. DD was born in it. Good memories.