Apartment vs Flat

Lorenzo94

Good evening all, I had a SO flat offered from a housing association. On the offer, they state flat, but when I looked the address up on the council website, as well as on other places, the “flat” is called apartment.
the mortgage application is being done with the word flat rather than apartment. Would this be an issues later on, or am I being pedantic and as long as the rest of the address is fine both flat or apartment are fine?

davidmcn

I don't know whether you think there's a difference between a flat and an apartment, but there really isn't. Until relatively recently, "apartments" were what Americans had - I'm not sure why or when it started being a widely-used term in the UK.

Anyway, as long as everybody is talking about the same property, what word they use is completely irrelevant.

Lorenzo94

Thanks for clarifying. This is my fourth time trying to purchase (other sales fell through due to Covid and the EWS1) so after a year struggling to get a flat, I’m getting very pessimistic 

Hasbeen

Lorenzo94 said:

Good evening all, I had a SO flat offered from a housing association. On the offer, they state flat, but when I looked the address up on the council website, as well as on other places, the “flat” is called apartment.
the mortgage application is being done with the word flat rather than apartment. Would this be an issues later on, or am I being pedantic and as long as the rest of the address is fine both flat or apartment are fine?

Apartment  = USA

Flat = UK

If people want to describe their flat as upmarket and more posher than flat then they call it an apartment.