British homes are small, old and made of brick. Average new-build floor space is among the smallest in western Europe, roughly half the American average, and around a fifth of the entire housing stock was built before 1919 — the oldest in Europe by a comfortable margin.
The types
- Terraced — a continuous row sharing side walls. The commonest older type, and the subject of its own entry.
- Semi-detached — a pair joined by one shared wall. The defining form of 1930s suburbia and the most common British house type overall.
- Detached — freestanding, and the aspirational option.
- Bungalow — single storey, associated with retirement, and a word borrowed from Bengali.
- Flat — an apartment. Purpose-built blocks, or conversions of larger houses.
- Maisonette — a flat over two floors with its own front door.
Why brick
Almost every British house is built of brick or block, with timber framing rare outside genuinely old buildings. Britain has abundant clay, deforested early, and has building regulations and mortgage practices built around masonry construction.
The consequence is thick walls, small windows, good sound insulation between rooms and poor thermal performance in the older stock. British houses are notoriously cold and draughty, and retrofitting insulation into solid-walled Victorian terraces is expensive and difficult.
The details that puzzle visitors
- Two taps. Older bathrooms have separate hot and cold taps with no mixer, so you either scald or freeze. This originates in regulations that kept stored hot water — historically from an open tank in the loft — separate from the mains supply.
- Carpet in the bathroom. Once common, now mercifully receding.
- No sockets in the bathroom. Regulations prohibit them; the light is on a pull cord or a switch outside the door. See electricity and plugs.
- Small fridges, often under the counter, because the British shop more frequently and in smaller quantities.
- The washing machine in the kitchen, since few homes have a separate utility room, and frequently no dryer at all — washing goes on a rack or the line.
- An airing cupboard — a warm cupboard containing the hot water tank, used for drying laundry and storing sheets.
- Radiators, not vents. Central heating is almost universally water-based, fed by a gas boiler.
- Letterboxes in the door rather than a mailbox at the gate, so post lands on the mat.
Buying and renting
Home ownership is around 65% and has fallen sharply among the young — the average first-time buyer is now in their thirties, and in London considerably older. House prices are around eight times median earnings nationally.
Two ownership types cause confusion. Freehold means you own the building and the land. Leasehold — normal for flats and, controversially, for some new-build houses — means you own the right to occupy for a fixed term while a freeholder owns the land and charges ground rent and service charges. Leasehold reform has been promised by successive governments and is proceeding slowly.
The shortage
Britain has not built enough homes for decades. Estimates of the shortfall run into the millions, planning permission is slow and locally contested, and the political term for opposition to development — NIMBY, “not in my back yard” — is British in origin. It is the single largest driver of the cost-of-living pressure on younger households.