Updated: 21.09.2023
Housing and Furniture
Housing in the UK
About 30% of homes are owned by their occupants and about 40% are on a mortgage. The cost of housing as a proportion of income is higher than average among EU countries. London is one of the most expensive places to live, the most expensive street is Kensington Palace Gardens. There are many social issues connected to housing that are especially problematic in London, such as homelessness and overcrowding.
Most people live in houses, a detachead house is a single house and in can be considered quite luxurious in some parts of the country. Typical for the UK are semi-detached houses (two houses together, sharing a wall) and terraced houses (a street of houses joined together). British homes are some of the smallest and most expensive to heat in Europe, because most of them was built before 1973. Many terraced houses were built before WWI and are now more than a hundred years old. Only some houses have central heating, many use more expensive electrical heaters.
Especially in old houses, there are some typical things that foreigners find odd. British bathrooms do not tend to have many electric sockets. Another curious thing is that the hot and cold water have separate taps, one of the reasons are that hot water is not counted as drinkable water. British electrical sockets have been designed to have three-pin plugs.
Housing in the US
Over 80% of the US population live in urban areas. American homes are some of the biggest in the world, with thre or more bedrooms, some families even have more houses. Most Americans own the house they live in and it is quite common to move every 5 years.
American houses are very modern and equiped with air-conditioning, dish washers and garbage smashers. Around the cities, suburbs have grown quickly and the houses there were bought straight from a catalog. There houses have big back yards and no fences. Renting an apartment can be very expensive in big cities, some of the most expensive are San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles.
There are some old colonial building, especially in New England, and colonial architecture is very popular. In the South, plantation houses can be found, huge, luxurious and comfortable. Bungalows and Spanish mansions are typical for California, patios are popular and many houses have swimming pools. In the Midwest, farmhouses are typical, with huge red barns, and in the Southwest, there are many ranches. Most American cities vere planned before they were built and they have typical architecture, for example New York City is famous for its brownhouses.
In the UK, the gound floor is at ground level and the first floor is upstairs, but in the UK, the firrst floor is the ground floor. Americans wear street shoes in the house in most of the country. Many houses have an American flag on display all year long. Mailboxes are also very typical, the box has a tunnel-top shape and a small red flag to signal incoming mail.
