Are you and your family looking at buying a new home? It can sometimes be very difficult to know where to begin in the home buying process, and a good idea would be to start making a list of necessities and desires for your new property. Once you have determined what you need and what you would like, it is much easier to start on your home search. (more…)

Deciding to buy your first home can be very exciting, as you imagine how you can decorate your hideaway in exactly the way that you want. You may already know how much you can afford to pay for a house, and may think that the only thing now is to find a place that you like in a good neighbourhood. There are however a considerable amount of other factors that you will need to consider when buying your first home. (more…)

When we talk about real estate transactions it is important to use right terminology. Here we will examine and explain few basic terms used is residential housing.

Occupation types
Housing tenure or occupation of a house can result from several legal arrangements. These include owner occupation, condominium housing, rented housing, pubic housing, and cooperative housing, among others. The type of occupancy does not depend on the type of house.

House Types
Residential real estate can be classified according to the physical appearance and their connectedness to neighboring real estate.

The term single family detached house is used to describe exactly that, a physically separated house occupied by a family. Duplex is a semi detached house with two homes usually separated by a single connecting wall.

There are several types of houses which are connected to their neighbors. A flat or an apartment is a single unit in a building with multiple housing units usually called an apartment building. When a multiple story building has separate houses in each floor, it is called a multi family house. A row-house or a townhouse, also called a terrace house, has a row of houses with just the connecting wall to separate them. Condominiums, though some times used to describe apartments, is a legal arrangement whereby the housing units in a apartment building or terrace house are owned separately and other common parts of the building and attached property are held collectively.

In addition to the already described permanent homes people also occupy potentially portable homes such as, mobile homes or trailers, house boats, and tents.

Size of a house is measured in several ways. When it is measured in square feet, the size of the living area, without garage and other such areas, are given in USA. In contrast, in Europe the measure includes the whole area enclosed by the walls. Houses are also measured according to the number of bedrooms.