Different types of houses in the UK & construction

An apartment is a room or a suite of rooms which are located in a building which is generally occupied by more than a single household. There is a small distinction between an apartment and a flat, they are very similar.

A house that is a single room that usually consists of a bedroom, sitting room, bathroom and kitchen.

Bungalows are a low down house that has only one story, although they can sometimes have a room upstairs usually a loft conversion with a dormer.

A small house with one main storey and a second lower story built of stone, brick or timber. What makes a house a cottage is that it is usually a modest, cosy dwelling in a rural or semi-rural location.

A detached house is a house that is not connected to any other house in anyway at all. It's a stand alone property, or free standing.

An end of terrace property is a house that is right at the end of a row of terrace properties. These are often more sought after, especially when they have space to the non connected side, than terraces.

A flat is defined as a single family suite of rooms, which includes a kitchen and at least a single bathroom, they are situated in a building that has multiple similar suites.

A maisonette is a set of rooms for living in which are typically on two separated stories or more which have separate entrances.

A property that is joined to another house but only on one side, shared by a common wall.

A house that was built in a continuous row of houses in a uniformed style, often identical.

In Britain, the majority of houses, bungalows and low-rise flats are brick or block wall construction. They will usually have a sloping roof and will either have solid or cavity walls, depending on the era they were built – solid from 1800s to 1950 and cavity from 1935 to now.

Anything other than a brick or block wall construction is defined as ‘non-traditional’. These include metal framed, pre-cast concrete, in-situ concrete and timber framed properties.

There are around 140,000 metal framed houses in the UK and a number of aluminium framed ones. The majority were built after the Second World War when rapid re-building was required. They are, however, made to look like standard houses with finishes of brick, render or imitation brick and many of them are so convincing that a specialist eye would be needed to discover that they are actually metal framed.

One way to find out if the house is metal framed is to look in the roof space. There will usually be unlined sheathed metal framing or metal stud framing, lined with plasterboard. These types of constructions can be difficult and costly to insure because they are expensive to fix if anything goes wrong. They are also not very flame resistant and can warp, which affects the entire structure.

Around 284,000 houses in the UK have concrete panels as their main wall structure. These were built throughout the 1920s, then again in the ‘50s and ‘60s. There are two types of pre-cast concrete houses – panel and pre-cast.

Panel systems are created in a factory and then transported to the building site for construction. If they are used as external walls then they will either look like concrete or will have brick or tile affixed to them to imitate a traditional house.

Pre-cast concrete systems are concrete frames with in-fill panels. The panels are usually slotted into the frame and mostly found in two-storey properties.

Introduced during the inter-war period in the UK, in-situ walling was intended to keep costs low and construction time down. However, they ended up being more costly than traditional builds.

The most well-known buildings with in-situ concrete were the Wimpey homes built between the 1940s and 1970s. Wimpey and similar 'pre-fabricated' properties can be difficult to insure because they are susceptible to damage.

Houses with timber frames generally have cladding on the outside that protects the property from the elements, as well as making them look more appealing.

From around 1920 to the late ‘70s approximately 108,000 timber-framed houses were built for the UK public sector. In the ‘80s brick and block constructions became more popular, until the ‘90s when timber frames made a comeback once more.

Recognising whether your property is timber framed or not depends on when it was built. Pre-WWII houses were mostly clad with timber as well as the structure being built from it.

However, post-war constructions were clad with bricks that made them appear to look more traditional. There will usually be indicators somewhere within the property as to whether it is a timber frame or not and a specialist will be able to work this out.

It is worth noting that a lot of insurers will view timber-framed houses as complex, 'non-standard' properties that could be a fire risk and, as such, they may increase their prices.