Re: Not always joking, it seems

In article <CAjvj.11080$XI.9410@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Jette <bosslady@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Tim Merrigan wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:53:26 +0000, Colette Reap <colette@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> > wrote:
> > 
> >> David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Any idea what fraction of the households in the UK own their own
houses?
> >> Yes. Looked it up a couple of years ago when someone (from outside
the
> >> UK) claimed that very few people in the UK owned their own home.
> >>
> >> The actual percentage of home owner****p in the UK is about 70%.
> > 
> > Need a definition of terms.  What constitutes a "home"?
> > 
> > IME here in the US that term generally means a free standing house
> > owned by the tenants.  Your flat, which you, contradictorily for US
> > terminology, referred to upthread as an apartment and indicated you
> > owned.  Here that would make it a condominium unit rather than an
> > apartment, which are rented.  Also, IIUC condos aren't included in
> > "homeowner" statistics.
> 
> 
> In the UK we don't have "condos", we have flats.  Some might be 
> rented, but many are owned. In Scotland that will be owned _outright_, 
> no leasehold.  Sometimes they're owned but privately rented out.

Condos in the U.S. are owned too--it's just a form of owner****p in which 
the whole building is to some degree the joint property of the people 
occupying the individual units.

It isn't clear to me, looking at the stat abstracts, whether their "home 
owner****p" figure includes units in condos and coops or not. They do 
show the total number of one unit detached housing units as 76 million, 
however, which suggests that a large fraction of the owner occupied 
homes in the U.S. are houses in the sense Tim refers to.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, in bookstores now