Difference Between “Duplex” and “Double House”

Within a few days of starting your search for a home, you will begin to encounter all sorts of tricky and pedantic terms in the real estate industry . The two most confusing are “double house” and “duplex”. It sounds like they are interchangeable terms for the same type of housing. But actually it is not. At first glance, these two types of properties often look almost identical, so you’d be forgiven for assuming these are just regional variations, much like one person’s soda is another’s soda . But the key to distinguishing between the two lies in understanding the difference between a house and the land on which it is built.

Do houses share walls?

A site is literally the land on which your house is built. It can be much larger than the actual structure, or it can be more or less exactly the size of your home, as is the case with many townhouses. When it comes to the difference between duplexes and twin houses, the key difference is who owns the lot.

• Duplex: A duplex (or triplex or quadruplex) has multiple properties on the same lot. Usually properties are part of the same structure. Since there is only one lot, very often one tenant will own the lot and building(s) and rent one or more properties. If the property (houses) is separately owned (with one or more homeowners in a ” land lease ” situation), or if the site is jointly owned, the homeowners will need to coordinate and collaborate on issues such as landscaping or repairs.
• Twin house: A twin house , in contrast, is two houses that share a common wall built on two separate lots . Unlike a duplex, people who own half of each twin house can do whatever they want with their part of the property because the properties are considered separate despite the common wall.

(To be clear, a townhouse is a separate property on the same lot, even though it may share walls with houses on both sides.)

How to distinguish a twin house from a duplex

It can be difficult to tell at a glance if a property is a twin or duplex, but one clue would be the “twin” of the houses. While a duplex can be built similarly to a twin house (with mirrored houses sharing a central wall), a duplex is any structure where multiple houses occupy the same lot, so the layout can be more varied. For example, many duplexes are stacked vertically or built as duplexes.

Twin houses, on the other hand, always remain twins, unless the previous owners made major renovations. So if the houses look like mirror images of each other with a common central wall, there’s a good chance they’re twin houses, but you can’t know with absolute certainty without checking the property records – and that makes a big difference to the point in terms of your responsibility in relation to the lot and your level of independence. Duplex living can have many restrictions on how you can change the property, and both types of homes have certain privacy issues due to their proximity and shared walls.