maisonette vs flat

movilogo

What is the difference between maisonette vs flat in terms of legal status?

I believe both are leasehold properties and attract management fees and restrictive covenants.

I am thinking of buying one for BTL purpose. Shall I be better of buy one over another?

davidmcn

No real difference, maisonette just refers to a particular layout of flat.

SuzieSue

I thought that maisonette meant that it had its own front door and no communal hallway etc, but I might be wrong.

AdrianC

movilogo wrote: »

What is the difference between maisonette vs flat in terms of legal status?

Nothing whatsoever.

I believe both are leasehold properties and attract management fees and restrictive covenants.

Which may apply to some houses, too.

I am thinking of buying one for BTL purpose. Shall I be better of buy one over another?

What do YOU understand the difference to be? Which offers a better yield in your local market, and - most importantly - which individual property looks to be the better rental proposition when all factors are taken into account?

Richard_Webster

As others have said there is no legal distinction and people have different ideas about what the words mean. In broad terms I would consider a maisonette to be a flat with a separate outside door and therefore no interior common parts.

Some people say that 2 storey flats are maisonettes e.g. in Council walk up blook where there is a balcony on every other floor and interior stairs withineach flat.

Lease wording will differ but it is the case that many "maisonettes" with separate outside doors do not have regular maintenance charges. It is often the case that each maisonette owner is responsible for his part of the building (downstairs - foundations and up to ground floor ceiling, first floor from there on up including the roof.) Sometimes they can ask the other maisonette owner to pay half the cost of any maintenance work, sometimes not.

Maisonette owners also often are required to insure their part of the building rather than have the freeholder do it and charge them. This brings an issue that you can never be sure that the other maisonette owner has adequately insured his part of the buildign - hence the need for contingent buildings insurance indemnities.

However you cannot say that a particualr leasehold scheme will always apply to a particualr sort of flat so the details have to be chacked in every case.

teddysmum

My sister's maisonette was in a two storey block (ie homes on ground and first floor), but, also all homes had their own access from a covered passageway and all were two interior floors (had internal stairs to bedrooms).


I've always assumed that the definition of maisonette was having two or more floors of living space per home,but built in a horizontal and vertical block. If not stacked vertically, they would be terraced/linked houses and aren't flats, because they have multiple floors.

System

A masionette has two meanings.

A flat where the front door is on another level to the living accommodation. I live in such a property as my front door is on the ground floor and all of my rooms are on the first floor. I have stairs, landing and an understairs cupboard. My neighbour below me lives in a flat as her front door and living accommodation is on the same level. But the room layouts are the same.

A house on top of a house. I lived in one in Leeds and if you cut one in the middle, it went lounge/kitchen, bedrooms/bathroom, lounge/kitchen, bedrooms/kitchen. I lived in a 2 bedroom example of this.

eddddy

Richard_Webster wrote: »

...
Some people say that 2 storey flats are maisonettes
...

Unless, of course, you live in London and your flat costs between £1m and £5m.

In that case they are "Duplexes". See: https://www.onthemarket.com/for-sale/duplex/london/

(I think it might be quite amusing to phone the EA and refer to them as maisonettes.)

959Rich

A maisonette is a 2 floor property. A flat is a single floor property... i.e. it's flat.

Estate agents use maisonette to try and make a flat sound more valuable. Similarly, estate agents now tend to call flats apartments. Marketing nonsense.

PS No difference in terms of legal status. Just different types of property.