Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Apartment building

An apartment building, block of flats or tenement, is a multi-unit dwelling made up of several (generally four or more) apartments (US), or flats (UK). A difference may be drawn such as in San Francisco, California, between an apartment and a flat, where an apartment is one of many units on a floor and a flat is the only unit on a given floor. Where the building is a high-rise construction, it is termed a tower block in the UK and elsewhere. The term apartment building is used regardless of height in North America and the terms residential tower or apartment tower are used in other countries such as Australia. Hi-rise apartments are a popular mode of living in many of the larger North American cities, as well as cities such as Dubai.
A two-unit dwelling is known as a duplex (US); a three-unit dwelling is known as a triplex. A two-floor dwelling is known as a maisonette (UK); a three-floor dwelling is known as a three-flat in Chicago, or in Boston as a three-decker or a triple-decker. Beyond this, cardinal numbers are used (e.g., fourplex, fiveplex) in the US, and the term multiplex is also used.

Terraced house

In architecture and city planning, a terrace(d) or row house or townhouse (though the latter term can also refer to patio houses) is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls. The first and last of these houses is called an end terrace, and is often larger than those houses in the middle.
The terrace house has housed different parts of the social spectrum in western society. Originally associated with the working class, in modern times, historical and reproduction terraces have been widely associated with the process of gentrification

Multi-family residential

Multi-family residential (also known as Multi-dwelling unit or MDU) is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential (ie non-commercial) inhabitants are contained within one building. The most common form is an apartment building.

Apartment

An apartment is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments may be owned (by an owner/occupier) or rented (by tenants).
A common alternative term for apartment is flat. The term apartment is favored in North America, whereas the term flat is commonly, but not exclusively, used in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Commonwealth nations. 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 the US, some apartment-dwellers own their own apartments, either as co-ops, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment connotes a residential unit or section in a building. In some locations, particularly the United States, the word denotes a rental unit owned by the building owner, and is not typically used for a condominium.

Ownership

Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property, which may be an object, land/real estate, or some other kind of property (like government-granted monopolies collectively referred to as intellectual property). It is embodied in an ownership right also referred to as title.
Ownership is the key building block in the development of the capitalist socio-economic system. The concept of ownership has existed for thousands of years and in all cultures. Over the millennia, however, and across cultures what is considered eligible to be property and how that property is regarded culturally is very different. Ownership is the basis for many other concepts that form the foundations of ancient and modern societies such as money, trade, debt, bankruptcy, the criminality of theft and private vs. public property.
The process and mechanics of ownership are fairly complex since one can gain, transfer and lose ownership of property in a number of ways. To acquire property one can purchase it with money, trade it for other property, receive it as a gift, steal it, find it, make it or homestead it. One can transfer or lose ownership of property by selling it for money, exchanging it for other property, giving it as a gift, being robbed of it, misplacing it, or having it stripped from one's ownership through legal means such as eviction, foreclosure and seizure. Ownership is self-propagating in that if an object is owned by someone, any additional goods produced by using that object will also be owned by the same person.

Residential real estate

The legal arrangement for the right to occupy a dwelling is known as the housing tenure. Types of housing tenure include owner occupancy, Tenancy, housing cooperative, condominiums (individually parceled properties in a single building), public housing, squatting, and cohousing.
Residences can be classified by if and how they are connected to neighboring residences and land. Different types of housing tenure can be used for the same physical type. For example, connected residents might be owned by a single entity and leased out, or owned separately with an agreement covering the relationship between units and common areas and concerns

Real estate in Mexico and Central America

The real estate business in Mexico and Central America is different from the way that it is conducted in the United States.
Some similarities include a variety of legal formalities (with professionals such as real estate agents generally employed to assist the buyer); taxes need to be paid (but typically less than those in U.S.); legal paperwork will ensure title; and a neutral party such as a title company will handle documentation and monies in order to smoothly make the exchange between the parties. Increasingly, U.S. title companies are doing work for U.S. buyers in Mexico and Central America.
Prices are often much cheaper than most areas of the U.S., but in many locations prices of houses and lots are as expensive as the U.S., one example being Mexico City. U.S. banks have begun to give home loans for properties in Mexico, but, so far, not for other Latin American countries.