Apartment Shapes And Sizes
Rentals can be classified into several types. One is a Studio, efficiency, bedsit, or bachelor style rental. These all tend to be the smallest rentals with the cheapest rents in a given area. These kinds of rental usually consist mainly of a large room which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom is its own smaller separate room.
Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom rentals where one bedroom is a separate room from the rest of the rental. Then there are two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. rentals. Small rentals often have only one entrance/exit.
Large rentals often have two entrances/exits, perhaps a door in the front and another in the back. Depending on the building design, the entrance/exit doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway. Depending on location, rentals may be available for rent furnished with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in with their own furniture. A garden rental has some characteristics of a townhouse: each rental has its own entrance, and rentals are not placed vertically over one another. However, a garden rental is usually only one story high and never more than two stories; they are often one-bedrooms and almost never more than two-bedrooms. Some garden rental buildings place a one-car garage under each rental, with pedestrian entrances from a common courtyard open at one end. The grounds are more landscaped than for other modestly scaled rentals. (Alternately, "garden rental" can refer to a unit built half below grade, putting its windows at garden level.
Laundry facilities may be found in a common area accessible to all the tenants in the building, or each rental may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built and the design of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the rentals in the building or separate for each rental and billed separately to each tenant (however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in rentals.
Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are extra also. Parking space(s), air conditioner, and extra storage space may or may not be included with an rental. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of people who can reside in each rental. On or around the ground floor of the rental building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and, thus, to the letter-carrier too. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large rental buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) for each individual unit. In smaller rental buildings such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash containers similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets in an rental.
Art Deco block[1]In some parts of the world, the word rental refers to a new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an rental is commonly called a loft.
An rental in the Philippines.When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord's family member, the unit may be known as an in-law rental or granny flat, though these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites or "mother-in-law suites."
In Milwaukee vernacular architecture, a Polish flat is an existing small house or cottage that has been lifted up to accommodate the creation of a new basement floor housing a separate rental, then set down again; thus becoming a modest two-story flat.
Stahlmoebel
