Semi-detached

This article is about housing. For other uses, see Semi-detached (disambiguation).

Semi-detached housing (often abbreviated to semi in the UK, Canada and Australia, as in "three-bedroom semi") consists of pairs of houses built side by side as units sharing a party wall and usually in such a way that each house's layout is a mirror image of its twin. This style of housing, although built throughout the world, is commonly seen as particularly symbolic of the suburbanisation of the United Kingdom and Ireland, or post-war homes in Central Canada. Confusingly, this is sometimes colloquially called a duplex in New England, other parts of the United States, and most of Canada, a term used elsewhere for two apartments, one above the other.

This type of housing can be thought of as being a half-way state between terraced or row housing and single-family detached homes. Terraced housing is constituted by continuous row houses with open spaces at the front and back, while semi-detached houses have front, rear and any one side open spaces, and individual detached houses have open spaces on all sides.

In the UK semi-detached houses are the most common property type, accounting for 32% of UK housing transactions and 32% of the English housing stock as of 2008. But there has been a decline. Between 1945 and 1964, 41% of all properties built were semis, but after 1980 they fell to 15%.

Cultural references

• "Semi-detached suburban Mr. James", written and performed by Manfred Mann, a song about a lost love marrying a philistine or babbitt living in a small suburban house, released in 1966 (Fontana TF 757), reached No. 2 in the UK charts.
• "...semi by the sea" is part of a lyric from musician James Blunt in the song "Wisemen", released in March 2005; it was the second single off of his 10x platinum Back to Bedlam album.