Different Types of Houses in Toronto

When you decide to buy a house in Toronto or when you check a property for sale, you must have the knowledge of which kind and what type of houses are available for you to buy. New homes, resale homes? Which one would be the best in your criteria and situation?

There are two type of residential properties available. One is in the form of a house with land and one with no land, which is an apartment.

Houses:

A house is in three type of building. The first and the best one is Detached. Detached house is a kind of building that is not attached to any other house close to it and has a free space around it. Has a front yard and a back yard. Now this detached house could have or not have a garage. The garage could be attache to the house. Could be built in the house or could be detached and be in a separate area of the house away from it.

Detached houses or houses have few forms. It could be a Bungalow, means one flat building. Could have or not have a basement. But the whole house is in one floor. All bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, living and dining rooms are in ground flat floor. If there is a basement, would be connected by the stairs to down stair. It might have a separate side door to the side of the house or might not have it.

The other form would be a bungalow with splits on a side of the house. Examples are like: Side splits, which might be toward the east or west side of the house or to the back of the house. So it is called: Side split, or back split. It is very very popular among family house buyers.

Now, the other form of a house with land is a semi detached. Semi detached is on land with two attached house in it with a common wall between the two houses. Half is for one family and half for the other family. Let say one owner wants to change the roof. Yes he could. Now let us say one wants to demolish and build a new one. No he can’t. Unless both owners decide to do it together and build the two semi detaches together again. This is the second popular kind of house or home that a buyer could buy.

The third form of a house is a free hold town house. I will explain to you what is free hold later on in this article. A row of attached homes that usually contains of 4 to 5 houses. In this case your house is attached and even though you have a land but you can not touch the house, like demolishing your house and build a new one. for every changes to the exterior of the house you must consult and agree with other neighbors who are in the same row of homes or town houses. Interior yes you could do any changes. This is the third popular for of a home a buyer could buy.

Condominium:

Now we come to the condominium kind of houses. Condominiums are either in a form of apartment buildings or in a form of townhouses. Apartment buildings that have many floors and each floor could have around 10,12 units in it. Condominiums usually are managed by a management company. Their work is taking care of all the maintenance need out side the unit and common elements. Also security of the place.

In case of any problem the owner of the place must contact them. But when it comes to inside the unit it is the responsibility of the owner to deal with the problem. I give you an example, in a condominium apartment the entrance door of the unit is not yours, it is belong to the building. You could not change it or paint it or for any other kind of changes you must confirm and consult with the management office. The balcony, balcony is not yours. You could not change it you could not cover, paint or put any kind of extra material in or install to it. The windows from out side the unit is the responsibility of the management and your responsibility is from inside your house.

Now when it comes to condominium town houses, it is the same concept of the apartment units. Any thing from out side the house is not your responsibility and anything inside house is yours.

Another issue I must bring up here is that you are not allowed to do any changes in the inside structure of the unit or the town house unless you have the permission of the management office. Some times if you did any changes to your house, when you want to sale you might have problem with the management office.

These were the different type of houses to buy.

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