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Asingle-family detached home – also called asingle-detached dwelling,single-family residence (SFR),separate house, or other similar terms – is a free-standingresidentialbuilding. It is defined in opposition to amulti-family residentialdwelling.

The definition of this type of house may vary between legal jurisdictions or statistical agencies. The definition, however, generally includes two elements:

• Single-family (home, house, or dwelling) means that the building is usually occupied by just onehousehold orfamily and consists of just onedwelling unit orsuite. In some jurisdictions, allowances are made forbasement suites oraccessory dwelling units without changing the description from "single-family". It does exclude, however, any short-term accommodation (hotel, motels, inns), large-scale rental accommodation (rooming or boarding houses,apartments), orcondominia.

• Detached (house, home, or dwelling) means that the building does not share walls with other houses. This excludesduplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, orlinked houses, as well as allterraced houses and most especiallytower blocks which can hold hundreds of families in a single building.

Most single-family homes are built onlots larger than the structure itself, adding an area surrounding the house, which is commonly called ayard inNorth American English or agarden inBritish English.Garages can also be found on many lots. Houses with an attached front entry garage closer to the street than any other part of the house are often derisively called asnout house.

Terms corresponding to a single-family detached home in common use aresingle-family home (in the US and Canada),single-detached dwelling (in Canada),detached house (in the United Kingdom and Canada), andseparate house (in New Zealand).^{[citation needed]}

In the United Kingdom, the termsingle-family home is almost unknown, except through Internet exposure to US media. Whereas in the US, housing is commonly divided into "single-family homes", "multi-family dwellings", "condo/townhouse", etc., the primary division of residential property in British terminology is between "houses" (including "detached", "semi-detached", and "terraced" houses andbungalows) and "flats" (i.e., "apartments" or "condominiums" in American English).^{[citation needed]}

In pre-industrial societies, most people lived in multi-family dwellings for most of their lives. A child lived with their parents from birth until marriage and then generally moved in with the parents of the man (patrilocal) or the woman (matrilocal) so that the grandparents could help raise the young children and so the middle generation could care for their aging parents. This type of arrangement also saved some of the effort and materials used for construction and, in colder climates, heating. If people had to move to a new place or were wealthy enough, they could build or buy a home for their own family, but this was not thenorm.

The idea of anuclear family living separately from their relatives as the norm is a relatively recent development related to rising living standards in North America and Europe during theearly modern andmodern eras. In theNew World, where land was plentiful, settlement patterns were quite different from the close-knit villages of Europe, meaning many more people lived in large farms separated from their neighbors. This has produced a cultural preference insettler societies for privacy and space. A countervailing trend has been industrialization and urbanization, which has seen more people worldwide move into multi-storyapartment blocks. In the New World, this type ofdensification was halted and reversed following theSecond World War when increased automobile ownership and cheaper building and heating costs producedsuburbanization instead.

Single-family homes are now common in rural and suburban and even some urban areas across the New World andEurope, as well as wealthier enclaves within theThird World. They are most common in low-density, high-income regions. For example, inCanada, according to the 2006 census, 55.3% of the population lived in single-detached houses, but this varied substantially by region. In the city ofMontreal, Quebec, Canada's second-most populous municipality, only 7.5% of the population lived in single-detached homes; in contrast, in the city ofCalgary, the third-most populous, 57.8% did.^[3] Note that this includes the "city limits" populations only, not the wider region. Culturally, single-family houses are associated withsuburbanization in many parts of the world. Owning a home with a yard and a "white picket fence" is seen as a key component of the "American dream" (which also exists with variations in other parts of the world).^[4]

In the 21st century, a lack ofaffordable housing, theclimate change impacts ofurban sprawl andcar dependency, and concerns aboutracial inequality have increasingly led cities to abandon single-family housing andsingle-family zoning in favor of higher-density zones.^[4][5]

House types include:

• Cottage, a small house. In the US, a cottage typically has four main rooms, two on either side of a central corridor. It is common to find a lean-to added to the back of the cottage, which may accommodate the kitchen, laundry, and bathroom. InAustralia, it is common for a cottage to have averandah across its front. In the UK and Ireland, any small, old (especially pre-World War I) house in a rural or formerly rural location, whether with one, two, or (rarely) three stories, is a cottage.
• Bungalow, in American English, this term describes a medium- to large-sized freestanding house on a generous block in the suburbs, with a generally less formal floor plan than a villa. Some rooms in a bungalow typically have doors that link them together. Bungalows may feature a flat roof. In British English, it refers to any single-storey house (much rarer in the UK than in the US).
• Villa, a term originating from Roman times when it was used to refer to a large house which one might retreat to in the country. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,villa suggested a freestanding comfortable-sized house on a large block, generally found in the suburbs. In Victorianterraced housing, a villa was a house larger than the averagebyelaw terraced house, often having double streetfrontage.
• Mansion, a very large, luxurious house, typically associated with exceptional wealth or aristocracy, usually of more than one story, on a large block of land or estate.
  Mansions usually will have many more rooms and bedrooms than a typical single-family home, including specialty rooms, such as a library, study, conservatory, theater, greenhouse, infinity pool, bowling alley, or server room.
  Many mansions are too large to be maintained solely by the owner, and there will be maintenance staff. This staff may also live on-site in 'servant quarters'.
• Palace, a particularly grand mansion, usually the home of a high ranking government official like a country's ruler.
• Castle, a medieval European or feudal Japanese fortified dwelling formerly occupied by a lord and his family. The termcastle can also refer to a house or mansion with some of the architectural characteristics of medieval castles.

• Semi-detached
• Single-family zoning

Wikimedia Commons has media related toDetached houses.

• "Australian Housing Types"(PDF).Your House teacher resource kit. Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 2006-06-26. Retrieved15 January 2006.

• House types

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