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A condominium is a form of joint ownership, in which each member owns his or her unit "from the plaster in" with everything else owned jointly as "common elements" -- stairs, hallways, roofs, furnaces, garages, underlying land. An office building can be organized as a condomium, and so could separate small houses. The usage people are most familiar with, of course, is for ownership of an apartment. There are two meanings for the word townhouse. One is as an architectural form, individually owned residences that are joined together by side walls, sometimes known as row houses. There are no other units above or below a townhouse, only ones to each side. Another use of the word townhouse is as a form of joint ownership. Each townhouse organization can be slightly different from a legal point of view. Sometimes, as with a condominium, the land itself and the roofs, might be owned in common by all the unit owners. Sometimes each unit might own its underlying land and roof. The confusion comes because the most common usages for both these terms are for individually owned units in a residential development. Before buying into one, you'd want to know exactly what you'd be owning individually |
