Apartment facts for kids
An apartment (or flat in Britain and most other Commonwealth countries) is a building where people pay the owner money in order to live there. The owner of the apartment is called the landlord and the people who live in the apartment are called the tenants. The money that the tenants pay in order to live there is called the rent or the rent money. "Rent" also means to pay to live in an apartment; the tenant "rents" the apartment from the landlord.
An apartment building has many apartments in it. In an apartment building, each apartment is a separate room or set of rooms for people to live in. Sometimes an apartment will only be one small room, and tenants will have to share other rooms like the bathroom and kitchen. Other times, tenants will only share an entrance hallway with doors that go to many apartments. This shared area is often cared for by a janitor or concierge.
An apartment complex is a group of apartment buildings. In an apartment complex, all of the apartment buildings are made in a similar way.
In many apartments, the tenants only pay the landlord for renting the apartment, and they have to pay other people to provide utilities like electricity and heat. In some apartments, especially the ones in apartment complexes, the tenants will have to pay more to rent the apartment, but in return the landlord will give them things like utilities, laundry rooms (where people wash their clothing), exercise rooms, and parking spaces for the tenant's car. Many people like this because it means they do not have to keep track of as many bills every month.
Apartment buildings are more common in cities than single apartments or houses, because there is less room in a city to fit buildings. Building a house for one family in a dense city would cost an enormous amount of money compared to building a house outside of a city.
Kinds of apartments
Studio apartment
In a studio apartment, there is a single large room instead of separate rooms for the living room, bedroom, and other areas. Usually the bathroom is a separate room.
Garden apartment
A garden apartment building is usually no more than three stories high and grouped around a courtyard. Sometimes a garden apartment has its own building entrance and a one car garage underneath it.
Images for kids
-
Apartments facing Central Park in Midtown Manhattan, New York City
-
Apartments in Madrid, Spain
-
Diverse types of apartments in Minato, Tokyo, Japan
-
A block of flats in Birmingham, England
-
Low-income housing of the St. James Town neighborhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada
-
High-rise buildings in the English Bay area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
-
A low-rise building of flats above shops in Fátima, Portugal
-
Studio apartment in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, showing double bed, kitchenette, and entrance way with sliding door to closet
-
Georgian terraced townhouses in London, England. The black railings enclose the basement areas, which in the twentieth century were converted to garden flats.
-
A dingbat, "The Mary & Jane", note styled balconies.
-
Mid-rise One-plus-five style apartment buildings in Austin, Texas.
-
Remains of an Ancient Roman apartment block from the early 2nd century AD in Ostia
-
The Chestnut Hill, an 1899 apartment house in Newton, Massachusetts
-
Tenement buildings in Manhattan's Lower East Side
-
New condominiums in downtown Toronto
-
The skyline of the Gold Coast in Queensland is dominated by apartments.
-
The Canterbury in St Kilda, Victoria is one of the earliest surviving apartment buildings in Australia.
See also
In Spanish: Apartamento para niños