Apartments may be owned (by an
owner-occupier) or rented (by tenants).
Some apartment-dwellers own their apartments, either as co-ops,
in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the
building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their
apartments and share ownership of the public spaces.
Most apartments are in buildings
designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided
into apartments. The word apartment connotes a residential unit or
section in a building.
Apartment building owners,
lessors, or managers often use the more general word units to refer to
apartments. Units can be used to refer to rental business suites as well
as residential apartments. When there is no tenant occupying an
apartment, the lessor is said to have a vacancy.
For apartment lessors, each vacancy
represents a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the
apartment is vacant (i.e., unoccupied). |
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