What's the difference between an apartment and an ordinary house?

Residential building is clearly defined in the Code for Residential Design and the Code for Residential Building: Family Residential Building.

There is no clear definition of apartment in the current design code. To understand the meaning of apartment, we must first understand another concept of real estate industry, called multi-family building. This concept means having more than one residential unit, or a building has multiple residential units. Multi-family buildings can be divided into two categories. The first category is buildings with two to four living units, which are usually called two to four families. The second category is buildings with five or more residential units, usually called apartments. Apartment is one of the most common forms of commercial real estate investment.

By definition, a house is for one family, while an apartment is usually used by multiple families or people.

2. The difference between the nature of land use and property rights

First of all, it is necessary to clarify the nature of land use for apartments and residential development plots. Houses can only be built on residential land or commercial and residential land, and apartments can be built on residential land or comprehensive land (commercial and residential), commercial land or educational land. Secondly, the nature of the use of the building. The development company handles the property rights formalities for the owners according to the residential house or apartment. The property rights of the house are 70 years, and the property rights of the residential apartment are 70 years, while the property rights of the commercial apartment are 40 or 50 years according to the nature of the land, and the property rights of the hotel apartment are 40 years according to the nature of the land. In this way, the definitions of house and apartment are basically clear. For example, the Chengdu Planning Bureau issued the Provisions on the Construction and Management of Apartments, which clearly defined "Apartments" as a special residential unit that meets other mandatory contents except sunshine requirements in the Code for Design of Residential Buildings. The Regulations on the Construction and Management of Apartments, which came into effect on June 5438+065438+1 October1,2005, also requires that the housing management department must clearly define the apartment as an apartment when registering the property right of the apartment, and mark it as an apartment in the column of the real estate license.

3. The difference between types

According to General Principles for Civil Building Design and Code for Residential Design, residential buildings are divided into low-rise residential buildings, multi-storey residential buildings, medium-high-rise residential buildings and high-rise residential buildings, and high-rise residential buildings are divided into unit high-rise residential buildings, tower high-rise residential buildings and corridor high-rise residential buildings.

According to several common types in the market, apartments are mainly divided into residential apartments (ordinary apartments), business apartments and serviced apartments. According to the nature of property rights, apartments can be roughly divided into three categories, one is rental type. It is for the purpose of renting to tenants, so this kind of apartment can be called a rental company. Second, self-occupation. If it is a self-occupied apartment, we call it Condo or co-op, and each unit of Condo apartment belongs to different owners and has independent property rights. The unit users of the cooperative are equivalent to the shareholders of the company. Obviously, from the perspective of commercial real estate in a broad sense, we only refer to buildings with five or more rental units, not Condo or Coop. Although some people buy apartments or cooperative apartments for rent, just like buying two apartments for rent, it is not a commercial building. There is another type, which is mixed. There are usually some commercial offices, shops, doctors' clinics and so on. The other part is an apartment or cooperative apartment. In addition, according to the structure and types of apartments, we can divide apartments into small apartments, garden apartments and high-rise apartments.

4. The difference between function and use

The functions and uses of apartments and houses are also different as follows:

4. 1 Less residents, only 3-4 people per household, with a quota of 3.5 people; There are usually many people in an apartment, 4 to 8 people in each room, sometimes more.

4.2 people who live in houses, mainly family members, have lived for a long time, from several years to decades or even a lifetime; People who live in apartments, mainly members of society, live for a short time, days, months or years.

4.3 Indoor personnel are familiar with the environment, so it is convenient to escape in case of fire, and the time is short; People living in apartments are unfamiliar with the environment, so it is inconvenient to escape in case of fire, and it takes a long time.

4.4 In the Code for Residential Design, the functional space of each part of the residential building has minimum use area requirements, such as bedroom, living room, bathroom and kitchen. Double bedroom 10㎡, single bedroom 6㎡, bedroom and living room 12㎡, first-class and second-class kitchens 4㎡, third-class and fourth-class kitchens 5㎡, and the requirements for apartment type are not strict.

4.5 Indoor environment requirements are different. The residence requires at least one living space in each apartment to get sunshine in winter, and the bedroom, living room and kitchen are provided with external windows, and the ratio of window area to building area is not less than 1/7, while the apartment does not require sunshine and ventilation area.

5. Differences in fire protection design

For multi-storey buildings, Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings GB500 16-2006 puts forward the concepts of residential buildings and non-residential buildings. Both apartments and houses belong to residential buildings, but at the same time apartments belong to non-residential residential buildings. The management team of the national standard "Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings" made clear the following questions in the reply of Jiangxi Provincial Public Security Fire Brigade "Letter on Consulting and Implementing Technical Standards for Fire Protection of Non-residential Buildings":

1. Except for student or employee apartments, the fire protection design of other apartments should be considered according to the hotel building.

2 independently built student or staff dormitory (apartment) should be designed according to the residential building. The type and width of evacuation stairs should be designed according to Articles 5.3. 1 1 and 5.3. 14 of Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings. The design of fire water supply shall comply with the relevant provisions of Chapter 8, such as Paragraph 4 of Article 8.3. 1. 3. Students' and staff's dormitories (apartments) built in combination with other functional spaces, in which the fire separation between the residential part and other non-residential parts shall be implemented according to the provisions of Article 5.4.6 of this specification, and the fire water supply design of the building shall be considered as the whole building. In this reply, it is clear that students' or employees' apartments are designed according to residential buildings, which are actually residential apartments (ordinary apartments), and other apartments are designed according to public buildings. However, the clear width of evacuation walkways and stairs in student or staff apartments should not be less than 1. 1m, while the clear width of stairs with railings on one side of houses with six floors or below should not be less than 1.0m, and the apartment should be 8.3.655. Paragraph 4 of Article 8.3. 1 Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings clearly states that the indoor fire water supply design of non-residential houses such as dormitories and apartments should be carried out according to the requirements of public buildings. In addition, as for the combustion performance and fire resistance limit of building components, the Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings stipulates that when the prestressed reinforced concrete floor is used in the second-class fire-resistant residential building, its fire resistance limit should not be less than 0.75h, which means that the prestressed reinforced concrete floor can be used, but not in apartments. Therefore, in the Code for Fire Protection Design of Buildings, the fire protection design requirements of houses and apartments are higher in some places than buildings and higher in some places than apartments.

For high-rise buildings, the Code for Fire Protection Design of High-rise Civil Buildings (GB 50045-95, 2005 edition) does not make clear the difference between houses and apartments. Although article 3.0. 1 divides high-rise buildings into residential buildings and public buildings, residential buildings only include one form of houses. Therefore, for high-rise apartments, no matter what kind of apartments, the author thinks that fire protection design should be carried out according to public buildings. There should be no less than two fire exits in each fire zone, and the distance between the two fire exits should not be less than 5m. Regarding the number of room doors, the Code for Fire Protection Design of High-rise Civil Buildings stipulates that when the building area is less than 60m2, a room located between two fire exits of public buildings can be set up. In the room at the end of the aisle in public buildings, when the building area does not exceed 75㎡, doors with a clear width of not less than 1.40m can be set. Of course, it is difficult to set two doors in a residential apartment. Whether it is possible to set a door with reference to residential buildings is worth discussing. Regarding the setting of fire-fighting facilities, can residential apartments refer to Article 7.6. 1 of Code for Fire Protection Design of High-rise Civil Buildings? For interior rooms without central air conditioning and Class A fire doors, there is no need for automatic sprinkler system. After all, the number of employees in residential apartments is generally small, and there are independent sanitary equipment and auxiliary facilities in the unit, so the actual area will be reduced.