Houses & Housing Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Citations in the Category Houses & Housing

Homes, apartments, rentals, mortgages, real estate, realtors, land, renting, leases, renovation, etc. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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presidential apartment n. With land prices skyrocketing in the city’s central business district (CBD), builders are concentrating on building large projects in the suburban or peripheral areas and are seen increasingly going in for top-end “presidential” apartments in city centre.…According to sources familiar with the trend, “People going in for such high-end apartments are very senior company executives, investment bankers and a few techies who have made money abroad, are always on the move and looking for anything that will be in the central part of the town with facilities and amenities that are world class.” [English Houses & Housing] [full cite] (Oct. 23, 2006)

rambler n. Last night we spent our first night in the house we’ll occupy for at least the next 12 months. In local parlance it’s a “rambler”—one floor, no basement, supposedly a scaled-down postwar variant of the ranch-style house, though ours is laid out like the shotgun shacks I first saw described in a Eudora Welty story. [English Houses & Housing] [full cite] (May. 21, 2008)

reborn renter n. In addition to prospective buyers who are waiting it out, there also is the “reborn renter,” a term used to describe people who have lost their house to foreclosure and are now back on the rental market. “Those are the people we lost over the last five years who bought a home, they went out and got a subprime loan and now they’re losing their homes,” Kellum said, adding they’re expecting to see more of that this year. [English Houses & Housing] [full cite] (Feb. 7, 2008)

red tagging n. But the town of South Cle Elum has brought the sale of the single-family house to a halt by refusing to grant an occupancy permit. They also ordered Vaughn and his partners to stop work on the home, a procedure known as red tagging. Building inspectors say the house doesn’t meet setback requirements because of the roof overhang. [English Government Houses & Housing Jargon] [full cite] (May. 22, 2007)

scraper n. Without those ongoing improvement costs, a house runs the risk of being what the building industry calls a “scraper.” That’s a house with so much deferred maintenance that it’s cheaper to scrape it off the foundation and start from scratch—with a value of what the land is worth minus the demolition costs. [English Houses & Housing Slang] [full cite] (Apr. 14, 2008)

session house n. What happened in the “session house” in Waterford—an open house party known in Dublin as a “free gaff”—can happen anywhere around the country. [English Houses & Housing Slang] [full cite] (Dec. 7, 2007)

short sale n. At Selling Paradise Realty, a sign seeks customers with a free list of properties facing foreclosure and “short sales,” meaning the price is less than the owner owes the bank. [English Houses & Housing Money & Finance] [full cite] (Dec. 23, 2007)

shot house n. Police are still investigating who drove Willis to the hospital and whether he was shot inside or outside a possible “shot house,” a term for a house that serves alcohol without a license. [English Crime & Prisons Food & Drink Houses & Housing] [full cite] (Dec. 29, 2006)

sick room n. Mold in classrooms. This is so common in our schools that there is a term for it: “sick room,” meaning that black mold grows on the walls of the classroom. [English Houses & Housing] [full cite] (Jan. 29, 2007)

simmering n. Also outlawed would be what is called “simmering,” where details of previous sales in the same area are changed to support the price of an overvalued property. [English Houses & Housing Jargon] [full cite] (Sep. 22, 2006)

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